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CONFESSIONS 

OFA 

<BOOI<cWVEI{ 

$(AU](ICMHA]\ICIS'EGAM 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 


GIFT  OF 

SUSAN  PUCK 


a. 


CONFESSIONS    OF   A 
BOOK-LOVER 


Books  by 
Maurice  Francis  Egan 


PRELUDES 

SONGS  AND  SONNETS 
STUDIES  IN  LITERATURE 
THE  GHOST  IN  HAMLET:  A  STUDY 
IN  COMPARATIVE  LITERATURE 
EVERYBODY'S  ST.  FRANCIS 
THE  IVY  HEDGE 
THE  WILES  OF  SEXTON  MAGINNIS 

TEN  YEARS  NEAR  THE  GERMAN 
FRONTD2R 

ETC.,  ETC. 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A 
BOOK-LOVER 

BY 
MAURICE  FRANCIS  EGAN 


GARDEN    CITY  NEW    YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,   PAGE   &  COMPANY 
1922 


z. 

/  o  o  3 
£2-2" 


COPYRIGHT,     922,    BY 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE    &    COMPANY 

ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED,    INCLUDING    THAT    OF    TRANSLATION 

INTO  FOREIGN   LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING   THE   SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

AT 

THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS,  GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
THEODORE   ROOSEVELT 

A  MAN  OF  ACTION 
IN  LOVE  WITH  BOOKS 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     My  Boyhood  Reading 1 

Early  Recollections. 

The  Bible. 

Essays  and  Essayists. 

II.    Poets  and  Poetry 76 

France — Of  Maurice  de  Guerin. 

Dante. 

English  and  American  Verse. 

III.  Certain  Novelists 134 

IV.  Letters,  Biographies,  and  Memoirs  .     .     156 
V.    Books  at  Random 205 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A 
BOOK- LOVER 

CHAPTER  I 

My  Boyhood  Reading 
Early  Recollections 

To  get  the  best  out  of  books,  I  am  convinced 
that  you  must  begin  to  love  these  perennial  friends 
very  early  in  life.  It  is  the  only  way  to  know  all 
their  "curves,"  all  those  little  shadows  of  ex- 
pression and  small  lights.  There  is  a  glamour 
which  you  never  see  if  you  begin  to  read  with  a 
serious  intention  late  in  life,  when  questions  of 
technique  and  grammar  and  mere  words  begin  to 
seem  too  important. 

Then  you  have  become  too  critical  to  feel  through 
all  Fenimore  Cooper's  verbiage  the  real  lakes  and 
woods,  or  the  wild  fervour  of  romance  beneath  dear 
Sir  Walter's  mat  of  words.  You  lose  the  unre- 
claimable  flavour  of  books.     A   friend  you   may 


2      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

irretrievably  lose  when  you  lose  a  friend — if  you 
are  so  deadly  unfortunate  as  to  lose  a  friend — for 
even  the  memories  of  him  are  embittered;  but  no 
great  author  can  ever  have  done  anything  that 
will  make  the  book  you  love  less  precious  to  you. 
The  new  school  of  pedagogical  thought  disap- 
proves, I  know,  of  miscellaneous  reading,  and  no 
modern  moralist  will  agree  with  Madame  de 
Sevigne  that  "bad  books  are  better  than  no  books 
at  all";  but  Madame  de  Sevigne  may  have  meant 
books  written  in  a  bad  style,  or  feeble  books,  and 
not  books  bad  in  the  moral  sense.  However,  I 
must  confess  that  when  I  was  young,  I  read  several 
books  which  I  was  told  afterward  were  very  bad 
indeed.  But  I  did  not  find  this  out  until  somebody 
told  me!  The  youthful  mind  must  possess  some- 
thing of  the  quality  attributed  to  a  duck's  back! 
I  recall  that  once  "The  Confessions  of  Rousseau" 
was  snatched  suddenly  away  from  me  by  a  careful 
mother  just  as  I  had  begun  to  think  that  Jean 
Jacques  was  a  very  interesting  man  and  almost  as 
queer  as  some  of  the  people  I  knew.  I  believe 
that  if  I  had  been  allowed  to  finish  the  book,  it 
would  have  become  by  some  mental  chemical  pro- 
cess a  very  edifying  criticism  of  life. 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  3 

"Tom  Jones"  I  found  in  an  attic  and  I  was  al- 
lowed to  read  it  by  a  pious  aunt,  whom  I  was  visit- 
ing, because  she  mixed  it  up  with  "Tom  Brown 
of  Rugby";  but  I  found  it  even  more  tiresome  than 
"Eric,  or  Little  by  Little,"  for  which  I  dropped 
it.  I  remember,  too,  that  I  was  rather  shocked 
by  some  things  written  in  the  Old  Testament;  and 
I  retorted  to  my  aunt's  pronouncement  that  she 
considered  "the  'Arabian  Nights'  a  dangerous 
book,"  by  saying  that  the  Old  Testament  was  the 
worst  book  I  had  ever  read;  but  I  supposed  "people 
had  put  something  into  it  when  God  wasn't  look- 
ing."    She  sent  me  home. 

At  home,  I  was  permitted  to  read  only  the  New 
Testament.  On  winter  Sunday  afternoons,  when 
there  was  nothing  else  to  do,  I  became  sincerely 
attached  to  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  And  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  nobody  could  tell  a  short  story 
as  well  as  Our  Lord  Himself.  The  Centurion  was 
one  of  my  favourite  characters.  He  seemed  to  be 
such  a  good  soldier;  and  his  plea,  "Lord,  I  am  not 
worthy,"  flashes  across  my  mental  vision  every 
day  of  my  life. 

In  the  Catholic  churches,  a  part  of  the  Gospel 
is  read  every  Sunday,  and  carefully   interpreted. 


4      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

This  always  interested  me  because  I  knew  in  ad- 
vance what  the  priest  was  going  to  read.  Most 
of  the  children  of  my  acquaintance  were  taught 
their  Scriptures  through  the  International  Sunday- 
school  lessons,  and  seemed  to  me  to  be  submerged 
in  the  geography  of  Palestine  and  other  tiresome 
details.  For  me,  reading  as  I  did,  the  whole  of 
the  New  Testament  was  radiant  with  interest, 
a  frankly  human  interest.  There  were  many  pas- 
sages that  I  did  not  pretend  to  understand,  some- 
times because  the  English  was  obscure  or  archaic, 
and  sometimes  because  my  mind  was  not  equal  to 
it  or  my  knowledge  too  small.  Whatever  may  be 
the  opinion  of  other  people,  mine  is  that  the  read- 
ing of  the  New  Testament  in  the  simplicity  of 
childhood,  with  the  flower  of  intuition  not  yet 
blighted,  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  mental 
experiences.  In  my  own  case,  it  gave  a  glow  to 
life;  it  caused  me  to  distinguish  between  truth  and 
fairy  tales,  between  fact  and  fiction — and  this  is 
often  very  difficult  for  an  imaginative  child. 

This  kind  of  reading  implies  leisure  and  the 
absence  of  distraction.  Unhappily,  much  leisure 
does  not  seem  to  be  left  for  the  modern  child. 
The  unhappy   creature    is   even   told    that    there 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  5 

will  be  "something  in  Heaven  for  children  to  do!" 
As  to  distractions,  the  modern  child  is  surrounded 
by  them;  and  it  appears  to  be  one  of  the  main  in- 
tentions of  the  present  system  of  instruction  not 
to  leave  to  a  child  any  moments  of  leisure  for  the 
indulgence  of  the  imagination.  But  I  am  not  of- 
fering the  example  of  my  childhood  for  imitation  by 
the  modern  parents. 

Nevertheless,  it  had  great  consolations.  There 
were  no  "movies"  in  those  days,  and  the  theatre 
was  only  occasionally  permitted;  but  on  long 
afternoons,  after  you  had  learned  to  read,  you 
might  lose  yourself  in  "The  Scottish  Chiefs"  to 
your  heart's  content.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
beauty  of  this  fashion  of  leisurely  reading  was  that 
you  had  time  to  visualize  everything,  and  you  felt 
the  dramatic  moments  so  keenly,  that  a  sense  of 
unreality  never  obtruded  itself  at  the  wrong  time. 
It  was  not  necessary  for  you  to  be  told  that  Helen 
Mar  was  beautiful.  It  was  only  necessary  for  her 
to  say,  in  tones  so  entrancing  that  you  heard  them, 
"My  Wallace!"  to  know  that  she  was  the  loveliest 
person  in  all  Scotland.  But  "The  Scottish  Chiefs  " 
required  the  leisure  of  long  holiday  afternoons, 
especially  as  the  copy  I  read  had  been  so  misused 


6      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

that  I  had  to  spend  precious  half  hours  in  putting 
the  pages  together.  It  was  worth  the  trouble, 
however. 

Before  I  could  read,  I  was  compelled  on  rainy- 
days  to  sit  at  my  mother's  knee  and  listen  to  what 
she  read.  I  am  happy  to  say  that  she  never  read 
children's  books.  Nothing  was  ever  adapted  to 
my  youthful  misunderstanding.  She  read  aloud 
what  she  liked  to  read,  and  she  never  considered 
whether  I  liked  it  or  not.  It  was  a  method  of  dis- 
cipline. At  first,  I  looked  drearily  out  at  the  soggy 
city  street,  in  which  rivulets  of  melted  snow  made 
any  exercise,  suitable  to  my  age,  impossible. 
There  is  nothing  so  hopeless  for  a  child  as  an  after- 
noon in  a  city  when  the  heavy  snows  begin  to 
melt.  My  mother,  however,  was  altogether  re- 
gardless of  what  happened  outside  of  the  house. 
At  two  o'clock  precisely — after  the  manner  of  the 
King  in  William  Morris's  " Earthly  Paradise" — 
she  waved  her  wand.  After  that,  all  that  I  was 
expected  to  do  was  to  make  no  noise. 

In  this  way  I  became  acquainted  with  "The 
Virginians,"  then  running  in  Harper's  Magazine, 
with  "Adam  Bede"  and  "As  You  Like  It"  and 
"Richard  III."  and  "Oliver  Twist"  and  "Nicholas 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  7 

Nickleby"  and  "Valentine  Vox"— why  "Valen- 
tine Vox?" — and  other  volumes  when  I  should 
have  been  listening  to  "Alice  in  Wonderland." 
But  when  I  came,  in  turn,  to  "Alice  in  Wonder- 
land," I  found  Alice's  rather  dull  in  comparison 
with  the  adventures  of  the  Warrington  brothers. 
And  Thackeray's  picture  of  Gumbo  carrying  in  the 
soup  tureen!  To  have  listened  to  Rebecca's  de- 
scription of  the  great  fight  in  "Ivanhoe,"  to  have 
lived  through  the  tournament  of  Ashby  de  la 
Zouche,  was  a  poor  preparation  for  the  vagaries  of 
the  queer  creatures  that  surrounded  the  inimi- 
table Alice. 

There  appeared  to  be  no  children's  books  in  the 
library  to  which  we  had  access.  It  never  seemed 
to  me  that  "Robinson  Crusoe"  or  "Gulliver's 
Travels"  or  "Swiss  Family  Robinson"  were  chil- 
dren's books;  they  were  not  so  treated  by  my 
mother,  and  I  remember,  as  a  small  boy,  going  up 
to  Chestnut  Street  in  Philadelphia,  with  divine 
eagerness,  to  buy  the  latest  number  of  a  Dickens 
serial.  I  think  the  name  of  the  shop — the  shop  of 
Paradise — which  sold  these  books  was  called  Ash- 
burnham's.  It  may  be  asked  how  the  episode  in 
"Adam  Bede"  of  Hetty  and  that  of  "little  Em'ly " 


8      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

in  Dickens  struck  the  child  mind.  As  I  remem- 
ber, the  child  mind  was  awed  and  impressed,  by 
a  sense  of  horror,  probably  occasioned  as  much  by 
the  force  of  the  style,  by  the  suggestions  of  an  un- 
known terror,  as  by  any  facts  which  a  child  could 
grasp. 

It  was  a  curious  thing  that  my  mother,  who  had 
remarkably  good  taste  in  literature,  admired  Mrs. 
Henry  Wood  extravagantly.  She  also  admired 
Queen  Victoria.  She  never  read  "East  Lynne" 
aloud,  because,  I  gathered,  she  considered  it 
"improper";  and  Miss  Braddon's  "Lady  Audley's 
Secret "  came  under  the  same  ban,  though  I  heard 
it  talked  of  frequently.  It  was  difficult  to  dis- 
cover where  my  mother  drew  the  line  between  what 
was  "proper"  and  what  was  "not  proper."  Shake- 
speare she  seemed  to  regard  as  eminently  proper, 
and,  I  noticed,  hesitated  and  mumbled  only  when 
she  came  to  certain  parts  of  Ophelia's  song.  It 
seems  strange  now  that  I  never  rated  Mrs.  Henry 
Wood's  novels  with  those  of  George  Eliot  or 
Thackeray  or  Dickens.  There  seemed  to  be  some 
imperceptible  difference  which  my  mother  never 
explained,  but  which  I,  instinctively,  understood; 
and  when  Anthony  Trollope's  "Orley  Farm"  was 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  9 

read,  I  placed  him  above  Mrs.  Henry  Wood,  but 
not  on  an  equality  with  Dickens  or  Thackeray. 

Harper  s  Magazine,  in  those  days,  contained 
great  treasure!  There,  for  instance,  were  the  de- 
lightful articles  by  Porte  Crayon — General  Stroth- 
ers,  I  think.  These  one  listened  to  with  pleasure; 
but  the  bane  of  my  existence  was  Mr.  Abbott's 
"Life  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte."  It  seemed  to  me 
as  if  it  would  never  end,  and  it  stretched  as  dolor- 
ously before  me  as  that  other  fearful  process 
which  appalled  my  waking  days — the  knowledge 
that  all  my  life  I  should  be  obliged  to  clean  my 
teeth  three  times  a  day  with  powdered  charcoal! 

After  a  time,  I  began  to  read  for  myself;  but  the 
delights  of  desultory  reading  were  gloomed  by  the 
necessity  of  studying  long  lessons  that  no  emanci- 
pated child  of  to-day  would  endure.  Misguided 
people  sometimes  came  to  the  school  and  told 
childish  stories,  at  which  we  all  laughed,  but  which 
even  the  most  illiterate  despised.  To  have  known 
George  Warrington,  to  have  mingled  familiarly  in 
the  society  of  George  Washington,  to  remember 
the  picture  of  Beatrix  Esmond  coming  down  the 
stairs — I  am  not  speaking  of  Du  Maurier's  traves- 
ties of  that  delightful  book — to  have  seen  the  old 


10    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

ladies  in  "Cranford,"  sucking  their  oranges  in  the 
privacies  of  their  rooms,  made  one  despise  foolish 
little  tales  about  over-industrious  bees  and  robins 
which  seemed  not  even  to  have  the  ordinary  com- 
mon sense  of  geese! 

Suddenly,  my  mother  became  a  devout  Catholic. 
The  scene  changed.  On  one  unhappy  Sunday 
afternoon  "Monte  Crist  o"  was  rudely  snatched 
from  my  entranced  hands.  Dumas  was  on  the 
list  of  the  "improper,"  and  to  this  day  I  have 
never  finished  the  episodes  in  which  I  was  so 
deeply  interested.  Now  the  wagon  of  the  circu- 
lating library  ceased  to  come  as  in  the  old  days. 
The  children  of  the  neighbours  offered  me  Sunday- 
school  books,  taken  from  the  precious  store  of  the 
Methodist  Sunday  School  opposite  our  house. 
They  seemed  to  me  to  be  stupid  beyond  all  words. 
There  was  not  one  really  good  fight  in  them  all, 
and  after  an  honest  villain  like  Brian  de  Bois 
Guilbert,  the  bad  people  in  these  volumes  were 
very  lacking  in  stamina.  The  "Rollo"  books  were 
gay  compared  to  them.  I  concluded  that  if  any- 
thing on  earth  could  make  a  child  hate  religion, 
it  was  the  perusal  of  these  unreal  books.  My 
mother  saw  that  I  had  Alban  Butler's  "Lives  of 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  11 

the  Saints"  for  Sunday  reading.  They  were 
equally  dull;  and  other  "Lives,"  highly  recom- 
mended, were  quite  as  uninspiring  as  the  little 
volumes  from  the  Protestant  library.  They  were 
generally  translated  from  the  French,  without 
vitality  and  without  any  regard  for  the  English 
idiom.  I  recall,  through  the  mists,  sitting  down 
one  Sunday  afternoon,  to  read  "The  Life  of 
Saint  Rose  of  Lima."  As  it  concerned  itself  with 
South  America,  it  seemed  to  me  that  there  might 
be  in  it  a  good  fighter  or  two;  or,  at  least,  some- 
body might  cut  off  the  ear  of  a  High  Priest's  ser- 
vant as  was  done  in  the  New  Testament.  But  no, 
I  was  shocked  to  read  in  the  very  beginning,  that 

so  pure  was  the  little  Saint,  even  in  her  infancy,  that  when 
her  uncle,  who  was  her  godfather,  kissed  her  after  her  bap- 
tism, a  rosy  glow,  a  real  blush  of  shame,  overspread  her 
countenance. 

In  that  book  I  read  no  more  that  day! 

But  I  discovered  a  volume  I  have  never  for- 
gotten, which  probably  after  "The  Young  Ma- 
rooners,"  had  the  greatest  influence  on  me  for  a 
short  period.  This  was  "Fabiola,"  by  Cardinal 
Wiseman.     There  was  good  stuff  in  it;  it  made  me 


12    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

feel  proud  to  be  a  Christian;  it  was  full  of  thrills; 
and  it  taught  a  lot  about  the  archaeology  of  Rome, 
for  it  was  part  of  that  excellent  story.  I  have  al- 
ways looked  on  "Fabiola"  as  a  very  great  book. 
Then  at  Christmas,  when  my  father  gave  me 
"The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii,"  I  was  in  a  new 
world,  not  alien  to  the  world  of  "Fabiola,"  but 
in  some  way  supplementary  to  it.  This  gift  was 
accompanied  by  Washington  Irving's  "Tales  of 
the  Alhambra."  Conspuez  les  lilies  des  poupees! 
What  nice  little  story  books,  arranged  for  the 
growing  mind,  could  awaken  such  visions  of  the 
past,  such  splendid  arabesques  and  trailing  clouds 
of  glory  as  this  book!  Read  at  the  right  time,  it 
makes  the  pomegranate  and  the  glittering  cres- 
cents live  forever,  and  creates  a  love  for  Spain  and 
a  romance  of  old  Spain  which  can  never  die. 

After  this,  I  had  a  cold  mental  douche.  I  was 
given  "Les  Enfants  des  Bois,"  by  Elie  Berthet  in 
French,  to  translate  word  for  word.  It  was  a 
horrible  task,  and  the  difficulties  of  the  verbs  and 
the  laborious  research  in  the  dictionary  prevented 
me  from  enjoying  the  adventures  of  these  infants. 
I  cannot  remember  anything  that  happened  to 
them;  but  I  know  that  the  book  gave  me  an  ever- 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  13 

enduring  distrust  of  the  subjunctive  mood  in  the 
Gallic  language.  Somebody  had  left  about  a  copy 
of  a  French  romance  called  "Les  A  ventures  de 
Polydore  Marasquin."  It  was  of  things  that 
happened  to  a  man  in  a  kingdom  of  monkeys.  It 
went  very  well,  with  an  occasional  use  of  the 
dictionary,  until  I  discovered  that  the  gentleman 
was  about  to  engage  himself  to  a  very  attractive 
monkeyess.  I  gave  up  the  book  in  disgust,  but 
I  have  since  discovered  that  there  have  been  lately 
several  imitators  of  these  adventures,  which  I  think 
were  written  by  an  author  named  Leon  Gozlan. 

About  this  time,  the  book  auction  became  a 
fashion  in  Philadelphia.  If  your  people  had  re- 
spect for  art,  they  invariably  subscribed  to  a  pub- 
lication called  the  Cosmopolitan  Art  Magazine, 
and  you  received  a  steel  engraving  of  Shakespeare 
and  his  Friends,  with  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  very  much 
in  the  foreground,  wearing  a  beautifully  puffed 
doublet  and  very  well-fitting  hose,  and  another 
steel  engraving  of  Washington  at  Lexington.  If 
your  people  were  interested  in  literature,  they  fre- 
quented the  book  auctions.  My  father  had  a  great 
respect  for  what  he  called  "classical  literature." 
He  considered  Cowper's  "The  Task"  immensely 


14    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

classical;  it  was  beautifully  bound,  and  he  never 
read  it.  One  day  he  secured  a  lovely  edition  of 
the  "  Complete  Works  of  Thomas  Moore."  It  had 
been  a  subject  of  much  competition  at  the  auction, 
and  was  cherished  accordingly.  The  binding  was 
tooled.  It  was  put  on  the  centre  table  and  adored 
as  a  work  of  art.     Here  was  richness! 

Tom  Moore's  long  poems  are  no  doubt  classed 
at  present  as  belonging  to  those  old  and  faded 
gardens  in  which  "The  Daisy"  and  "The  Keep- 
sake," by  Lady  Blessington,  once  flourished;  but 
if  I  could  only  recall  the  pleasure  I  had  in  the  read- 
ing of  "Lalla  Rookh"  and  "The  Veiled  Prophet 
of  Korhasson,"  I  think  I  should  be  very  happy. 
And  the  notes  to  "Lalla  Rookh"  and  to  Moore's 
prose  novel  of  "The  Epicurean"!  "The  Epicu- 
rean" was  not  much  of  a  novel,  but  the  notes  were 
full  of  amazing  Egyptian  mysteries,  which  seemed 
quite  as  splendid  as  the  machinery  in  the  "Arabian 
Nights."  The  notes  to  "Lalla  Rookh"  smelled 
of  roses,  and  I  remember  as  a  labour  of  love  copying 
out  all  the  allusions  to  roses  in  these  notes  with  the 
intention  of  writing  about  them  when  I  grew  up. 
My  mother  objected  to  the  translations  from  An- 
acreon;  she  said  they  were  "improper";  but  my 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  15 

father  said  that  he  had  been  assured  on  competent 
authority  that  they  were  "classic,"  and  of  course 
that  settled  it.  There  was  no  story  in  them,  and 
they  seemed  to  me  to  be  stupid. 

Just  about  this  time,  one  of  the  book  auctions 
yielded  up  a  copy  of  the  "Complete  Works  of 
Miss  Mitford."  You  perhaps  can  imagine  how  a 
city  boy,  who  was  allowed  to  spend  two  weeks  each 
year  at  the  most  on  the  arid  New  Jersey  seacoast, 
fell  upon  "Our  Village."  It  became  an  incentive 
for  long  walks,  in  the  hope  of  finding  some  country 
lanes  and  something  resembling  the  English  prim- 
roses. I  read  and  reread  "Our  Village"  until  I 
could  close  my  eyes  at  any  time  and  see  the  little 
world  in  which  Miss  Mitford  lived.  I  tried  to 
read  her  tragedy,  "The  Two  Foscari."  A  tragedy 
had  a  faint  interest;  but,  being  exiled  to  the  attic 
for  some  offense  against  the  conventionalities  de- 
manded of  a  Philadelphia  child,  with  no  book  but 
Miss  Mitford's,  I  spent  my  time  looking  up  all  the 
references  to  roses  in  her  tragedies.  These  I  com- 
bined with  the  knowledge  acquired  from  Tom 
Moore,  and  made  notes  for  a  paper  to  be  printed 
in  some  great  periodical  in  the  future.  Why 
roses?     Why  Miss  Mitford  and  roses?     Why  Tom 


16    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Moore  and  roses?  I  do  not  know,  but,  when  I 
was  sixteen  years  of  age,  I  printed  the  paper  in 
Appletons  Journal,  where  it  may  still  be  found. 
My  parents,  who  did  not  look  on  my  literary 
attempts,  at  the  expense  of  mathematics,  with 
favour,  suggested  that  I  was  a  plagiarist,  but  as 
I  had  no  time  to  look  up  the  meaning  of  the  word 
in  the  dictionary,  I  let  it  go.  It  simply  struck  me 
as  one  of  those  evidences  of  misunderstanding  which 
every  honest  artist  must  be  content  to  accept. 

My  mother,  evidently  fearing  the  influence  of 
"classical"  literature,  gave  me  one  day  "The 
Parent's  Assistant,"  by  Miss  Edgeworth.  I  think 
that  it  was  in  this  book  that  I  discovered  "Rosa- 
mond; or  The  Purple  Jar"  and  the  story  of  the 
good  boy  or  girl  who  never  cut  the  bit  of  string 
that  tied  a  package;  I  sedulously  devoted  myself 
to  the  imitation  of  this  economic  child,  and  was 
very  highly  praised  for  getting  the  best  out  of  a 
good  book  until  I  broke  a  tooth  in  trying  to  undo 
a  very  tough  knot. 

It  was  a  far  cry  from  the  respectable  Miss 
Edgeworth  to  a  series  of  Beadle's  "Dime  Novels." 
I  looked  on  them  as  delectable  but  inferior. 
There    was    a    prejudice    against    them    in    well- 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  17 

brought -up  households;  but  if  you  thoughtfully 
provided  yourself  with  a  brown  paper  cover,  which 
concealed  the  flaring  yellow  of  Beadle's  front  page, 
you  were  very  likely  to  escape  criticism.  I  never 
finished  "Osceola,  the  Seminole,"  because  my 
aunt  looked  over  my  shoulder  and  read  a  raptu- 
rous account  of  a  real  fight,  in  which  somebody 
kicked  somebody  else  violently  in  the  abdomen. 
My  aunt  reported  to  my  mother  that  the  book  was 
very  "indelicate"  and  after  that  Beadle's  "Dime 
Novels"  were  absolutely  forbidden.  At  school, 
we  were  told  that  any  boy  who  read  Beadle's  was 
a  moral  leper;  but  as  most  of  us  concluded  that 
leper  had  something  to  do  with  leaper,  the  effect 
was  not  very  convincing. 

Perhaps  I  might  have  been  decoyed  back  to 
Beadle's,  for  all  the  youngsters  knew  that  there 
was  nothing  really  wrong  in  them,  but  I  hap- 
pened to  remember  the  scene  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
"Abbot,"  where  Edward  Glendenning  wades  into 
the  sea  to  prevent  Mary  Stuart  from  leaving 
Scotland.  I  hied  me  to  "The  Monastery"  and 
devoured  everything  of  Sir  Walter's  except  "Saint 
Ronan's  Well."  That  never  seemed  worthy  of  the 
great  Sir  Walter.     "The  Black  Dwarf  "  and  "  Anne 


18    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

of  Geierstein"  were  rather  tough  reading,  and 
"Count  Robert  of  Paris"  might  have  been  written 
by  Lord  Bacon,  if  Lord  Bacon  had  been  a  con- 
temporary of  Sir  Walter's.  "Peveril  of  the  Peak  " 
and  "Ivanhoe"  and  "Bride  of  Lammermoor" 
again  and  again  dazzled  and  consoled  me  until  I 
discovered  "Nicholas  Nickleby." 

"Nicholas  Nickleby"  took  entire  possession  of 
me.  In  the  rainy  winter  afternoons,  when  nothing 
could  occur  out  of  doors  which  a  respectable  city 
boy  was  permitted  to  indulge  in,  I  found  that  I 
was  expected  to  work.  Boys  worked  hard  at  their 
lessons  in  those  days.  There  was  a  kitchen 
downstairs  with  a  Dutch  oven  not  used  in  the 
winter.  There  it  was  easy  to  build  a  small  fire 
and  to  toast  bread  and  to  read  "Nicholas  Nick- 
leby" after  one  had  rushed  through  the  required 
tasks,  which  generally  included  ten  pages  of  the 
"Historia  Sacra"  in  Latin.  If  you  never  read 
"Nicholas  Nickleby"  when  you  were  young,  you 
cannot  possibly  know  the  flavour  of  Dickens. 
You  can't  laugh  now  as  you  laughed  then.  Oh, 
the  delight  of  Mr.  Crummles's  description  of  his 
wife's  dignified  manner  of  standing  with  her  head 
on  a  spear! 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  19 

The  tragedy  in  "Nicholas  Nickleby"  never  ap- 
pealed to  me.  It  was  necessary  to  skip  that. 
When  the  people  were  gentlemanly  and  ladylike, 
they  became  great  bores.  But  what  young  reader  of 
Dickens  can  forget  the  hostile  attitude  of  Mr.  Lilly  - 
vick,  great-uncle  of  the  little  Miss  Kenwigses,  when 
Nicholas  attempted  to  teach  them  French?  As 
one  grows  older,  even  Mr.  Squeers  and  'Tilda 
give  one  less  real  delight;  but  think  of  the  first  dis- 
covery of  them,  and  it  is  like  Balboa's — or  was  it 
Cortez's? — discovery  of  the  Pacific  in  Keats's 
sonnet.  "  Nicholas  Nickleby "  was  read  over  and 
over  again,  with  unfailing  pleasure.  I  found 
"Little  Dorrit"  rather  tiresome;  "Barnaby 
Rudge"  and  "A  Tale  of  Two  Cities"  seemed  to  be 
rather  serious  reading,  not  quite  Dickensish  enough 
for  my  taste,  yet  better  than  anything  else  that 
anybody  had  written.  My  later  impressions  of 
Dickens  modified  these  instinctive  intuitions. 

One  day,  a  set  of  Thackeray  arrived,  little  green 
volumes,  as  I  remember,  and  I  began  to  read 
"Vanity  Fair."  My  mother  seized  it  and  read 
it  aloud  again.  Her  confessor  had  told  her  that 
a  dislike  for  good  novels  was  "Puritan"  and  she, 
shocked  by  the  implied  reproach,  took  again  to 


20    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

novel  reading.  I  am  afraid  that  I  disliked  Colonel 
Dobbin  and  Amelia  very  much.  Becky  Sharp 
pleased  me  beyond  words;  I  don't  think  that  the 
morality  of  the  case  affected  my  point  of  view  at 
all.  I  was  delighted  whenever  Becky  "downed" 
an  enemy.  They  were  such  a  lot  of  stupid  people 
— the  enemies — and  I  reflected  during  the  course 
of  the  story  that,  after  all,  Thackeray  had  said 
that  poor  Becky  had  no  mother  to  guide  her  foot- 
steps. When  the  Marquis  of  Steyne  was  hit  on 
the  forehead  with  the  diamonds,  I  thought  it 
served  him  right;  but  I  was  unhappy  because  poor 
Becky  had  lost  the  jewels.  In  finishing  the  book 
with  those  lovely  Thackerayan  cadences,  my 
mother  said  severely,  "That  is  what  always  hap- 
pens to  bad  people!"  But  in  my  heart  I  did  not 
believe  that  Becky  Sharp  was  a  bad  person  at 
aU. 

For  a  time  I  returned  to  Dickens,  to  "Nicholas 
Nickleby,"  to  "David  Copperfield."  I  respected 
Thackeray.  He  had  gripped  me  in  some  way  that 
I  could  not  explain.  But  Dickens  I  loved.  Later 
— it  was  on  one  June  afternoon  I  think — when  the 
news  of  Dickens's  death  arrived,  it  seemed  to  me 
that  for  a  while  all  delight  in  life  had  ended. 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  21 

One  of  those  experts  in  psychology  who  are  al- 
ways seeking  questions  sometime  ago  wrote  to  me 
demanding  if  "Plutarch's  Lives"  had  influenced 
me,  and  whether  I  thought  they  were  good  reading 
for  the  young.  Our  "Plutarch"  was  rather  ap- 
palling to  look  at.  It  was  bound  in  mottled  card- 
board, and  the  pages  had  red  edges ;  but  I  attacked 
it  one  day,  when  I  was  about  ten  years  of  age,  and 
became  enthralled.  It  was  "actual."  My  mother 
was  a  veteran  politician,  and  read  a  daily  paper, 
with  Southern  tendencies  called  the  Age;  my 
father  belonged  to  the  opposite  party,  and  admired 
Senator  Hoar  as  greatly  as  my  mother  admired  the 
famous  Vallandigham.  Between  the  two,  I  had 
formed  a  very  poor  opinion  of  American  statesmen 
in  general;  but  the  statesmen  in  "Plutarch"  were 
of  a  very  different  type. 

Julius  Csesar  interested  me;  but  Brutus  filled  me 
with  exaltation.  I  had  not  then  read  Shake- 
speare's "Julius  Caesar."  It  seemed  to  me  that 
Brutus  was  a  model  for  all  time.  Now,  understand 
I  was  a  good  Christian  child,  and  I  said  my  prayers 
every  night  and  morning,  but  this  did  not  prevent 
me  from  hating  the  big  bully  of  the  school,  who 
made  the  lives  of  the  ten  or  fifteen  small  boys  a 


n    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

perpetual  torment.  How  we  suffered,  no  adult 
human  tongue  can  tell — and  our  tongues  never 
told  because  it  was  a  convention  that  tales  should 
not  be  told  out  of  school.  One  of  the  pleasant 
tricks  of  the  bully  and  his  friends  was  to  chase  the 
little  boys  after  school  in  the  winter  and  bury  them 
until  they  were  almost  suffocated  in  the  snow  which 
was  piled  up  in  the  narrow  streets.  It  was  not 
only  suffocating  snow,  but  it  was  dirty  snow.  It 
happened  that  I  had  been  presented  with  a  pen- 
knife consisting  of  two  rather  leaden  blades  cov- 
ered with  a  brilliant  iridescent  mother-of-pearl 
handle.  The  bully  wanted  this  knife,  and  I  knew 
it.  Generally,  I  left  it  at  home;  but  it  occurred  to 
me  on  one  inspired  morning,  after  I  had  read 
"Plutarch"  the  night  before,  that  I  would  display 
the  knife  open  in  my  pocket,  and  when  he  threw 
the  full  weight  of  his  body  upon  me,  I  would  kill 
him  at  once,  by  an  upward  thrust  of  the  knife. 

This  struck  me  as  a  good  deed  entirely  worthy 
of  Brutus.  Of  course,  I  knew  that  I  should  be 
hanged,  but  then  I  expected  the  glory  of  making  a 
last  dying  speech,  and,  besides,  the  school  would 
have  a  holiday.  On  the  morning  preceding  the 
great  sacrifice,  I  gave  out  dark  hints  to  the  small 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  23 

boys,  distributed  my  various  belongings  to  friends 
who  were  about  to  be  bereaved,  and  predicted  a 
coming  holiday.  I  was  looked  on  as  rather  "crazy," 
but  I  reflected  that  I  would  soon  be  considered 
heroic,  and  my  friends  gladly  accepted  the  gifts. 

The  fatal  afternoon  came.  I  displayed  the  pen- 
knife. The  chase  began.  The  bully  and  his 
chosen  friends  threw  themselves  upon  me.  The 
moment  had  come;  I  thrust  the  knife  upward;  the 
big  boy  uttered  a  howl,  and  ran,  still  howling.  I 
looked  for  blood,  but  there  was  none  visible;  I 
came  to  the  conclusion,  with  satisfaction,  that  he 
was  bleeding  internally.  I  spent  a  gloomy  evening 
at  home  uttering  dire  predictions  which  were  in- 
comprehensible to  the  members  of  my  family,  and 
reread  Brutus,  in  the  "Lives." 

The  next  morning  I  went  to  school  with  lessons 
unstudied  and  awaited  events.  The  mother  of 
the  bully  appeared,  and  entered  into  an  excited 
colloquy  with  the  very  placid  and  dignified  teacher. 
I  announced  to  the  boy  next  to  me,  "My  time  has 
come."  I  was  called  up  to  the  awful  desk.  "Is 
he  dead?"  I  asked.  "Did  he  bleed  internally?" 
"You  little  wretch,"  the  mother  of  the  tyrant 
said,  "you  cut  such  fearful  holes  in  my  son's  coat, 


24    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

that  he  is  afraid  to  come  to  school  to-day!"  Then 
I  said,  regretfully,  "Oh,  I  hoped  that  I  had  killed 
him."  There  was  a  sensation;  my  character  was 
blackened.  I  was  set  down  as  a  victim  of  total 
depravity;  I  endured  it  all,  but  I  knew  in  my  heart 
that  it  was  "Plutarch."  This  is  the  effect  that 
"Plutarch"  had  on  the  mind  of  a  good  Christian 
child. 

The  effects  of  "Plutarch"  on  my  character  were 
never  discovered  at  home,  and  as  I  grew  older  and 
learned  one  or  two  wrestling  tricks,  the  bully  let 
me  alone.  Besides,  my  murderous  intention, 
which  had  leaked  out,  gave  me  such  a  reputation 
that  I  became  a  dictator  myself,  and  made  terms 
for  the  small  boys,  in  the  name  of  freedom,  which 
were  sometimes  rather  despotic. 

It  was  also  during  these  days  that  I  remember 
carrying  confusion  into  the  family  when  a  patron- 
izing, intellectual  lady  called  and  said,  "I  hope 
that  this  dear  little  boy  is  reading  the  Rollo 
books?"  "No,"  I  answered  quickly  and  in- 
discreetly, "I  am  reading  'The  New  Magdalen,'  by 
Wilkie  Collins."  I  did  not  think  much  of  Wilkie 
Collins  until  I  read  "The  Moonstone."  It  seemed 
that  "The  New  Magdalen"  had  been  purchased 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  25 

inadvertently  by  my  father,  in  a  packet  of  "clas- 

S1CS. 

My  father  generally  arrived  at  home  late  in  the 
afternoon,  when  he  read  the  evening  paper.  After 
a  very  high  tea,  he  stretched  himself  on  a  long 
horsehair-covered  sofa,  and  bade  me  read  to  him, 
generally  from  the  novels  of  George  Eliot,  or  from 
certain  romances  running  through  the  New  York 
Ledger  by  Sylvanus  Cobb,  Jr.  These  were  gen- 
erally stories  of  the  times  of  the  Irish  Kings,  in 
which  gallowglasses  and  lovely  and  aristocratic 
Celtic  maidens  disported  themselves.  My  mother, 
after  her  conversion,  disapproved  of  the  New  York 
Ledger.  In  fact,  there  were  families  in  Philadel- 
phia whose  heads  regarded  it  with  real  horror! 
In  our  house,  there  was  a  large  stack  of  this  inter- 
esting periodical,  which,  with  many  volumes  of 
Godey's  Lady's  Booh,  were  packed  in  the  attic. 

It  happened  that  a  young  man,  in  whom  my 
father  had  a  great  interest,  was  threatened  with 
tuberculosis.  An  awful  rumour  was  set  abroad 
that  he  was  about  to  die.  He  sent  over  a  mes- 
senger asking  my  father  for  the  back  numbers 
of  the  New  York  Ledger  containing  a  long  serial 
story  by  Mrs.  Anna  Cora  Mowatt.     As  I  remember, 


26    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

it  was  a  story  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  the 
last  number  that  I  was  allowed  to  read  ended  with 
a  description  of  a  dance  in  an  old  chateau,  when 
the  Marquise,  who  was  floating  through  the  min- 
uet, suddenly  discovered  blood  on  the  white-kid 
glove  of  her  right  hand!  I  was  never  permitted 
to  discover  where  the  blood  came  from;  I  should 
like  to  find  out  now  if  I  could  find  the  novel.  I 
remember  that  my  mother  was  terribly  shocked 
when  my  father  sent  the  numbers  of  the  New  York 
Ledger  to  the  apparently  dying  man.  "It's  a 
horrible  thing,"  my  mother  said,  "to  think  of  any 
Christian  person  reading  the  New  York  Ledger  at 
the  point  of  death."  The  young  man,  however, 
did  not  die;  and  I  rather  think  my  father  attributed 
his  recovery  to  the  exhilarating  effect  of  one  of 
his  favourite  stories. 

There  were  certain  other  serial  stories  I  was 
ordered  to  read;  they  were  stories  of  the  Irish 
Brigade  in  France.  My  mother,  I  remember,  dis- 
approved of  them  because  Madame  de  Pompadour 
was  frequently  mentioned,  and  she  thought  that 
my  father  regarded  the  lady  in  question  too  toler- 
antly. These  romances  were,  I  think,  written  by 
a  certain  Myles  O'Reilly  who  was  in  some  way  con- 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  27 

nected  with  the  army.  This  procedure  of  reading 
aloud  was  not  always  agreeable,  as  my  father 
frequently  went  to  sleep  in  the  middle  of  a  pas- 
sage and  forgot  what  I  had  already  read.  The 
consequence  was  that  I  was  obliged  to  begin 
the  same  old  story  over  again  on  the  following 
evening. 

It  happened  that  my  father  was  one  of  the  di- 
rectors of  a  local  library,  and  in  it  I  found  Bates's 
volume  on  the  Amazon — I  forget  the  exact  title  of 
the  book.  I  found  myself  in  a  new  world;  I  lived 
in  Para;  I  tried  to  manufacture  an  imitation  of 
the  Urari  poison  with  a  view  to  exterminating  rats 
in  the  warehouse  by  the  use  of  arrows;  I  lived  and 
had  my  being  in  the  forests  of  Brazil;  and  I  pro- 
duced, at  intervals,  a  thrilling  novel,  with  the 
glowing  atmosphere  of  the  Amazon  as  a  back- 
ground. I  preferred  Mr.  Bates  to  any  novelist  I 
had  ever  read.  He  held  possession  of  my  imagi- 
nation, until  he  was  forced  out  by  a  Mr.  Jerning- 
ham  who  wrote  a  most  entrancing  book  on  Brit- 
tany. Saint  Malo  became  the  only  town  for  me; 
I  adored  Henri  de  la  Roche jaquelein;  and  the  Stu- 
arts, whom  I  had  learned  to  love  at  the  knees  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  were  displaced  by  the  Vendeans. 


28    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Noticing  that  I  was  devoted  to  books  of  travel, 
my  father  asked  me  to  parse  Kane's  "Arctic  Voy- 
ages." I  found  the  volumes  cold  and  repellent. 
They  gave  me  a  rooted  prejudice  against  the 
North  Pole  which  even  the  adventure  of  Doctor 
Cook  has  never  enabled  me  to  overcome. 

About  this  time,  my  mother  began  to  feel  that 
I  needed  to  read  something  more  gentle,  which 
would  root  me  more  effectively  in  my  religion. 
She  began,  I  think,  with  Cardinal  Newman's 
"Callista"  in  which  there  was  a  thrilling  chapter 
called  "The  Possession  of  Juba."  It  seemed  to 
me  one  of  the  most  stirring  things  I  had  ever 
read.  Then  I  was  presented  with  Mrs.  Sadlier's 
"The  Blakes  and  the  Flanagans,"  which  struck 
me  as  a  very  delightful  satire,  and  with  a  really 
interesting  novel  of  New  York  called  "Rose- 
inary,"  by  Dr.  J.  V.  Huntington;  and  then  a 
terribly  blood-curdling  story  of  the  Carbonari 
in  Italy,  called  "Lionello."  After  this  I  was 
wafted  into  a  series  of  novels  by  Julia  Kavanagh; 
"Natalie,"  and  "Bessie,"  and  "Seven  Years,"  I 
think  were  the  principals.  My  father  declined  to 
read  them;  he  thought  they  were  too  sentimental, 
but  as  the  author  had  an  Irish  name  he  was  in- 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  29 

clined  to  regard  them  with  tolerance.  He  thought 
I  would  be  better  employed  in  absorbing  "Tom 
and  Jerry;  or  The  Adventures  of  Corinthian  Bob," 
by  Pierce  Egan.  My  mother  objected  to  this,  and 
substituted  "Lady  Violet;  or  the  Wonder  of  Kings- 
wood  Chace,"  by  the  younger  Pierce  Egan,  which 
she  considered  more  moral. 

My  father  was  very  generous  at  Christmas,  and 
I  bought  a  large  volume  of  Froissart  for  two  dollars 
and  a  half  at  an  old  book  stand  on  Fifth  Street, 
near  Spruce.  After  this,  I  was  lost  to  the  world 
during  the  Christmas  holidays.  After  breakfast, 
I  saturated  myself  with  the  delightful  battles  in 
that  precious  book. 

My  principal  duty  was  to  look  after  the  front 
pavement.  In  the  spring  and  summer,  it  was  care- 
fully washed  twice  a  week  and  reddened  with  some 
kind  of  paint,  which  always  accompanied  a  box 
of  fine  white  sand  for  the  scouring  of  the  marble 
steps;  but  in  the  winter,  this  respectable  sidewalk 
had  to  be  kept  free  from  snow  and  ice. 

Hitherto  my  battle  with  the  elements  had  been 
rather  a  diversion.  Besides,  I  was  in  competition 
with  the  other  small  boys  in  the  block — or  in  the 
"square,"  as  we  Philadelphians  called   it.     Now 


30    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

it  became  irksome;  I  neglected  to  dig  the  ice  from 
between  the  bricks;  I  skimped  my  cleaning  of  the 
gutter;  I  forgot  to  put  on  my  "gums."  The  boy 
next  door  became  a  mirror  of  virtue;  he  was  quoted 
to  me  as  one  whose  pavement  was  a  model  to  all  the 
neighbours;  indeed,  it  was  rumoured  that  the 
Mayor  passing  down  our  street,  had  stopped  and 
admired  the  working  of  his  civic  spirit,  while  the 
result  of  my  efforts  was  passed  by  with  evident 
contempt.  I  did  not  care.  I  hugged  Froissart 
to  my  heart.  Who  would  condescend  to  wield  a 
broom  and  a  wooden  shovel,  even  for  the  reward  of 
ten  cents  in  cash,  when  he  could  throw  javelins 
and  break  lances  with  the  knights  of  the  divine 
Froissart?  The  end  of  my  freedom  came  after 
this.  The  terrible  incident  of  the  Mayor's  con- 
tempt, invented,  I  believe,  by  the  boy  next  door, 
induced  my  mother  to  believe  that  I  was  not  only 
losing  my  morals,  but  becoming  too  much  of  a 
book- worm.  For  many  long  weeks  I  was  de- 
prived of  any  amusing  book  except  "Robinson 
Crusoe."  After  this  interval,  vacation  came;  I 
seemed  to  have  grown  older,  and  books  were  never 
quite  the  same  again. 

In  the  vacation,  however,  when  the  days  were 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  31 

very  long  and  there  was  a  great  deal  of  leisure,  I 
found  myself  reduced  to  Grimms'  "Fairy  Tales" 
and  a  delightful  volume  by  Madame  Perrault, 
and  I  was  even  then  very  much  struck  by  the  dif- 
ference. Of  course  I  read  Grimm  from  cover  to 
cover,  and  went  back  again  over  the  pages,  hoping 
that  I  had  neglected  something.  The  homeliness 
of  the  stories  touched  me;  it  seemed  to  me  that 
you  found  yourself  in  the  atmosphere  of  old  Ger- 
many. Madame  Perrault  was  more  delicate;  her 
fairy  tales  were  pictures  of  no  life  that  ever  ex- 
isted, and  there  was  a  great  dissimilarity  between 
her  "Cendrillon"  and  the  Grimms'  story  of 
"Aschenputtel."  As  I  remember,  the  haughty  sis- 
ters in  the  story  of  the  beautiful  girl  who  lived 
among  the  ashes  each  cut  off  one  of  her  toes,  in  order 
to  make  her  feet  seem  smaller  and  left  bloody  marks 
on  the  glass  slipper.  Madame  Perrault 's  slipper 
was,  I  think,  of  white  fur,  and  there  was  no  such 
brutality  in  her  fairyland.  But,  except  Hans 
Christian  Andersen's,  there  are  no  such  gripping 
fairy  tales  as  those  of  the  Brethren  Grimm.  Dur- 
ing this  vacation,  too,  I  discovered  the  "  Lepra  - 
chaun,"  the  little  Irish  fairy  with  the  hammer. 
He  was  not  at  all  like  the  English  fairies  in  Shake- 


32    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

speare's  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  and,  leav- 
ing out  Ariel,  I  think  I  liked  him  best  of  all. 

That  summer,  too,  I  found  an  old  copy  of  "Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream"  in  the  attic.  The  print 
was  exceedingly  fine,  but  everything  was  there. 
No  doubt  there  is  much  to  be  said  by  the  peda- 
gogues in  favour  of  scrupulously  studying  Shake- 
speare's plays;  but  if  you  have  never  discovered 
"As  You  Like  It"  or  "Midsummer  Night's 
Dream"  when  you  were  very  young,  you  will 
never  know  the  meaning  of  that  light  which  never 
was  on  land  or  sea,  and  with  which  Keats  sur- 
rounds us  in  the  "Ode  to  the  Nightingale."  The 
love  interest  did  not  count  much.  In  my  youth- 
ful experience  everybody  either  married  or  died, 
in  books.  That  was  to  be  expected.  It  was  the 
atmosphere  that  counted.  One  could  see  the 
troopers  coming  into  the  open  space  in  the  Forest 
of  Arden  and  hear  their  songs,  making  the  leaves 
of  the  trees  quiver  before  they  appeared.  And 
Puck!  and  Caliban!  When  I  was  young  I  was 
always  very  sorry  for  Caliban,  and,  being  very 
religious,  I  felt  that  the  potent  Prospero  might 
have  done  something  for  his  soul. 

There    was    a    boy    who    lived   near   us   called 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  33 

Lawrence  Stockdale — peace  be  to  his  ashes  where- 
ever  he  rests!  His  father  and  mother,  who  were 
persons  of  cultivation,  encouraged  him  to  read,  but 
we  were  not  of  one  opinion  on  any  subject.  He 
was  devoted  to  Dumas,  the  Elder.  After  the 
episode  of  "Monte  Cristo"  I  was  led  to  believe 
that  Dumas  was  "wrong."  I  preferred  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  and  loved  all  the  Stuarts,  having  a  positive 
devotion  for  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots.  One  day, 
however,  I  discovered  somewhere,  under  a  pile  of 
old  geometries  and  books  about  navigation,  a  fat, 
red-bound  copy  of  "Boccaccio."  Stockdale  said 
that  "Boccaccio"  was  "wronger"  than  Dumas, 
and  that  his  people  had  warned  him  against  the 
stories  of  this  Italian.  As  we  lived  near  an 
Italian  colony,  and  he  disliked  Italians,  while  I 
loved  them,  I  attributed  this  to  mere  prejudice. 

The  "Boccaccio"  was,  as  I  have  said,  fat  and 
large.  For  a  boy  who  likes  to  read,  a  fat  book  is 
very  tempting,  and  just  as  I  had  seated  myself 
one  afternoon  on  the  front  doorstep,  to  read  the 
story  of  the  Falcon,  and  having  finished  it  with 
great  pleasure,  dipped  into  another  tale  not  so 
edifying,  my  mother  appeared.  She  turned  pale 
with  horror,  and  seized  the  book  at  once.     My 


34    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

father  was  informed  of  what  had  occurred.  He 
was  little  alarmed,  I  think.  My  mother  said: 
"We  shall  have  to  change  the  whole  course  of 
this  boy's  reading."  "We  shall  have  to  change 
the  boy  first,"  my  father  said,  with  a  sigh.  But 
this  was  not  the  end.  At  the  proper  time  I  was 
led  to  the  Pastor,  who  was  my  mother's  con- 
fessor. The  book  was  presented  to  him  for  de- 
struction. 

"It's  a  bad  book,"  the  Monsignore  said.  "I 
hope  you  didn't  talk  about  any  of  these  stories  to 
the  other  boys  in  school?" 

"Oh,  no,"  I  said;  "if  I  did,  they  would  say 
much  worse  things,  and  I  would  probably  have  to 
tell  them  in  confession.  Besides,"  I  added,  "all 
the  people  in  the  Boccaccio  book  were  good 
Catholics,  I  suppose,  as  they  were  Italians,  and  I 
think,  after  all,  when  they  caught  the  plague,  they 
died  good  deaths." 

The  Pastor  looked  puzzled,  took  the  book,  and 
gave  me  his  blessing  and  dismissed  me.  And  my 
mother  seemed  to  think  that  I  was  sufficiently  ex- 
orcised. 

After  this  the  books  I  read  were  more  carefully 
considered.     I   was   given   the   "Tales   of   Canon 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  35 

Schmidt" — dear  little  stories  of  German  children 
in  the  Black  Forest,  with  strange  little  wood-cuts, 
which  went  very  well  with  another  volume  I  found 
at  this  time  called  "Jack  Halifax,"  not  "John 
Halifax,  Gentleman,"  which  my  mother  had  al- 
ready read  to  me — but  a  curious  little  tome  long 
out  of  print.  And  then  there  sailed  upon  my 
vision  a  long  procession  of  the  works  of  the  Flemish 
novelist,  Hendrik  Conscience,  whose  "Lion  of 
Flanders"  opened  a  new  world  of  romance,  and 
there  were  "Wooden  Clara."  and  other  pieces 
which  made  one  feel  as  if  one  lived  in  Flanders. 
Just  about  this  time  I  read  in  Littell's  Living 
Age  a  novel  called  "The  Amber  Witch,"  and  some  of 
Fritz  Reuter's  Low  German  stories;  but  these  were 
all  effaced  by  "The  Quaker  Soldier."  This  may 
not  have  been  much  of  a  novel.  I  did  not  put  it 
to  the  touch  of  comparison  with  "The  Virginians" 
or  "Esmond."  They  were  what  my  father  called 
"classics" — things  superior  and  apart;  but  "The 
Quaker  Soldier"  was  quite  good  enough  for  me. 
It  opened  a  new  view  of  American  Revolutionary 
history,  and  then  it  was  redolent  of  the  country  of 
Pennsylvania.  I  recall  now  the  incident  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Dutch  housewife's  using  her  thumb 


36    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

to  spread  the  butter  on  the  bread  for  the  hungry 
soldier.  This  is  all  that  I  can  recall  of  those  de- 
lectable pages.  But,  later,  neither  Henry  Peter- 
son's "Pemberton"  nor  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell's  "Hugh 
Wynne"  seemed  to  have  the  glory  and  the  fas- 
cination of  the  long-lost  "Quaker  Soldier." 

After  this,  I  fell  under  the  spell  of  the  French 
Revolution  through  a  book,  given  to  me  by  my 
mother,  about  la  Vendee.  It  was  a  dull  book,  but 
nothing,  not  even  a  bad  translation,  could  dim 
the  heroism  of  Henri  de  la  Rochejaquelein  for  me, 
and  I  became  a  Royalist  of  the  Royalists,  and  held 
hotly  the  thesis  that  if  George  Washington  had 
returned  the  compliment  of  going  over  to  France 
in  '89,  he  would  have  done  Lafayette  a  great  ser- 
vice by  restoring  the  good  Louis  XVI.  and  the 
beautiful  Marie  Antoinette! 

When  I  had  reached  the  age  of  seventeen  I  had  de- 
veloped, as  the  result  of  my  reading,  a  great  be- 
lief in  all  lost  causes.  I  had  become  exceedingly 
devoted  to  the  cause  of  Ireland  as  the  kindly  Pastor 
had  sent  me  a  copy  of  "Willy  Reilly  and  His 
Colleen  Bawn,"  perhaps  as  an  antidote  to  the 
lingering  effects  of  "Boccaccio."  I  was  rather 
troubled  to  find  so  many  "swear  words"  in  it,  but 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  37 

I  made  all  the  allowances  that  a  real  lover  of  liter- 
ature is  often  compelled  to  make! 

The  Bible 

The  glimpses  I  had  of  the  Bible,  some  of  which 
rather  prejudiced  me,  as  a  moral  child,  against  the 
Sacred  Book,  were,  however,  of  inestimable  value. 
Of  course  the  New  Testament  was  always  open 
to  me,  and  I  read  it  constantly  as  a  pleasure.  The 
language,  both  in  the  Douai  version  and  the  King 
James  version,  was  often  very  obscure.  Although 
I  soon  learned  to  recognize  the  beauty  of  the  23rd 
Psalm  in  the  King  James  version — which  I  always 
read  when  I  went  to  one  of  my  cousins— I  found 
the  sonorous  Latinisms  of  the  Douai  version  inter- 
esting. For  a  time  I  was  limited  to  a  book  of 
Bible  stories  given  us  to  read  at  school,  as  it  was 
considered  unwise  to  permit  children  to  read  the 
Old  Testament  unexpurgated.  After  a  while, 
however,  the  embargo  seemed  to  be  raised  for 
some  reason  or  other,  and  again  I  was  allowed  to 
revel  with  a  great  deal  of  profit  in  the  wonderful 
poems,  prophecies,  and  histories  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. I  soon  discovered  that  it  was  impossible 
to  understand  the  allusions  in  English  literature 


38    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

without  a  knowledge  of  the  Bible.  What  would 
"Ruth  among  the  alien  corn"  mean  to  a  reader 
who  had  never  known  the  beauty  of  the  story 
of  Ruth?  And  the  lilies  of  the  field,  permeating 
all  poetical  literature,  would  have  lost  all  their 
perfume  if  one  knew  nothing  about  the  Song  of 
Solomon. 

Putting  aside  the  question  as  to  whether  young 
readers  should  be  let  loose  in  the  Old  Testament 
or  not,  or  whether  modern  ideas  of  purity  are 
justified  in  including  ignorance  as  the  supremest 
virtue,  he  who  does  not  make  himself  familiar  with 
Biblical  ideas  and  phraseology  finds  himself  in 
after-life  with  an  incomplete  medium  of  expression. 
It  used  to  be  said  of  the  typical  English  gentleman 
that  all  he  needed  to  know  was  to  ride  after  the 
hounds  and  to  construe  Horace.  This  is  not  so 
absurd,  after  all,  as  it  appears  to  be  to  most 
moderns.  To  construe  Horace,  of  course,  meant 
that  he  should  have  at  least  a  speaking  acquaint- 
ance with  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Roman  lit- 
erature, and  this  knowledge  gave  him  a  grip  on 
the  universal  speech  of  all  cultivated  people. 
However  useless  his  allusions  to  Chloe  and  to 
Maecenas   were  in  the  business  of  practical  life, 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  39 

he  was  at  least  able  to  understand  what  they 
meant,  and  even  a  slight  acquaintance  with  the 
Latins  stamped  him  as  speaking  the  speech  of  a 
gentleman. 

Similarly,  a  man  who  knows  the  Scriptures  is 
fitted  with  allusions  that  clarify  and  illuminate 
the  ordinary  speech.  He  may  not  have  any  tech- 
nical knowledge,  or  his  technical  knowledge  may 
be  so  great  as  to  debar  him  from  meeting  other 
men  in  conversation  on  equal  grounds;  but  his 
reading  of  the  Bible  gives  his  speech  or  writing  a 
background,  a  colour,  a  metaphorical  strength, 
which  illuminate  even  the  commonplace.  Strike 
the  Bible  from  the  sphere  of  any  man's  experience 
and  he  is  in  a  measure  left  out  of  much  of  that 
conversation  which  helps  to  make  life  endurable. 

Pagan  mythology  is  rather  out  of  fashion. 
Even  the  poets  often  now  assume  that  Clytie  is  a 
name  that  requires  an  explanation  and  that  Daphne 
and  her  flight  through  the  laurel  do  not  bring  up 
immediate  memories  of  Syrinx  and  the  reeds. 
The  Dictionary  of  Lampriere  is  covered  with 
dust;  and  one  may  quote  an  episode  from  Ovid 
without  an  answering  glance  of  comprehension 
from  the  hearer.     This  does  not  imply  ignorance; 


40    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

it  is  only  that,  in  the  modern  system,  the  old 
mythology  is  not  taken  very  seriously. 

Since  Latin  and  Greek  have  almost  ceased  to  be 
a  necessary  part  of  a  gentleman's  education,  there 
is  no  class  of  allusions  from  which  we  can  draw  to 
lighten  or  strengthen  ordinary  speech  unless  we 
turn  to  the  Bible.  This  deprives  conversation  of 
much  of  its  colour  and  renders  it  rather  common- 
place and  meagre.  Unfortunately,  among  many 
of  our  young  people,  the  Bible  seems  to  be  a  book 
to  be  avoided  or  to  be  treated  in  a  rather  "jocose" 
manner.  To  raise  a  laugh  on  the  vaudeville  stage, 
a  Biblical  quotation  has  only  to  be  produced,  and 
the  weary  comedian,  when  he  is  at  a  loss  to  get  a 
witty  speech  across  the  footlights,  is  almost  sure 
to  speak  of  Jonah  and  the  whale! 

It  is  disappointing  to  notice  this  gradual  change 
that  has  taken  place  in  the  attitude  of  the  younger 
generation  toward  the  Sacred  Book.  The  Sunday 
Schools,  in  their  attempt  to  make  the  genealogies 
of  importance  and  to  overload  the  memories  of 
their  little  disciples  with  a  multitude  of  texts,  or 
to  over-explain  every  allusion  in  the  terms  of 
physical  geography,  etc.,  may  in  a  measure  be 
responsible  for  this,  but  they  cannot  be  entirely 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  41 

responsible.  One  must  admit  that  diversities  of 
interpretations  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  from  a 
religious  point  of  view  will  always  be  an  obstacle 
to  their  use  in  schools  where  the  children  of  Jews, 
of  Mohammedans,  and  of  the  various  Christian 
denominations  assemble.  But  there  is  always  the 
home,  where  the  first  impetus  to  a  satisfactory 
knowledge  of  the  Sacred  Book  ought  to  be  given. 
The  decay  of  the  practice  of  reading  aloud  in  our 
homes  is  very  evident  in  the  lack  of  real  culture — 
or,  rather,  rudiments  of  real  culture — in  our 
children.  But  there  is  no  use  in  declaiming  against 
this.  Other  times,  other  manners;  accusatory 
declamation  is  simply  a  luxury  of  Old  Age! 

Personally,  my  desultory  reading  of  the  Old  and 
the  New  Testaments  gave  me  a  background  against 
which  I  could  see  the  trend  of  the  books  I  devoured 
more  clearly ;  it  added  immensely  to  my  enjoyment 
of  them;  besides,  it  was  a  moral  and  ethical  safe- 
guard. It  was  easy  even  for  a  boy  to  discover  that 
the  morality  of  the  New  Testament  was  the 
standard  by  which  not  only  life,  but  literature, 
which  is  the  finest  expression  of  life,  should  be 
judged.  If  there  are  great  declamations,  decla- 
mations full  of  dramatic  fire,  which  nearly  every 


42    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

boy  at  school  learns  to  love,  in  the  Old  Testaments 
there  are  the  most  moving,  tender,  and  simple 
stories  in  the  New.  To  the  uncorrupted  mind,  to 
the  unjaded  mind,  which  has  not  been  forced  to 
look  on  books  as  mere  recitals  of  exciting  adven- 
tures, the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  are  full  of  entranc- 
ing episodes.  It  is  very  easy  for  a  receptive  youth 
to  acquire  a  taste  for  St.  Paul,  and  I  soon  learned 
that  St.  Paul  was  not  only  one  of  the  greatest  of 
letter  writers,  but  as  a  figure  of  history  more 
interesting  than  Julius  Caesar,  and  certainly  more 
modern.  Young  people  delight  in  human  docu- 
ments. They  may  not  know  why  they  delight 
in  these  documents,  but  it  is  because  of  their  hu- 
manity. Now  who  can  be  more  human  than  St. 
Paul?  And  the  more  you  read  his  epistles,  and 
the  more  you  know  of  his  life,  the  more  human  he 
becomes.  He  knew  how  to  be  angry  and  sin  not, 
and  the  way  he  "takes  it  out"  of  those  unreason- 
able people  who  would  not  accept  his  mission  has 
always  been  a  great  delight  to  me! 

Under  the  spell  of  his  writing,  it  was  a  pleasure 
to  pick  out  the  phases  of  his  history — a  history 
that  even  then  seemed  to  be  so  very  modern,  and  to 
a  boy,  with  an  unspoiled  imagination,  so  very  real. 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  43 

It  seemed  only  natural  that  he  should  be  converted 
by  a  blast  of  illumination  from  God.  It  is  not 
hard  for  young  people  to  accept  miracles.  All  life 
is  a  miracle,  and  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun 
was  to  me  no  more  of  a  miracle  than  the  conversion 
of  this  fierce  Jew,  who  was  a  Roman  citizen.  He 
seemed  so  very  noble  and  yet  so  very  humble. 
He  could  command  and  plead  and  weep  and  de- 
nounce; and  he  made  you  feel  that  he  was  gen- 
erally right.  And  then  he  was  a  tentmaker  who 
understood  Greek  and  who  could  speak  to  the 
Greeks  in  their  own  language. 

Late  in  the  seventies  when  nearly  every  student 
I  knew  was  a  disciple  of  Huxley  and  Tyndal  and 
devoted  to  that  higher  criticism  of  the  Bible  which 
was  Germanizing  us  all,  I  fortified  myself  with  St. 
Paul,  and  with  the  belief  that,  if  he  could  break  the 
close  exclusiveness  of  the  Jews,  and  take  in  the 
Gentiles,  if  he  could  throw  off,  not  contemptuously, 
many  of  the  rigid  ceremonies  of  his  people,  Christi- 
anity, in  the  modern  time,  could  very  well  afford 
to  accept  the  new  geological  interpretation  of  the 
story  of  Genesis  without  destroying  in  any  way 
the  faith  which  St.  Paul  preached. 

Somewhat  later,  too,  when  I  read  constantly  and 


44    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

with  increasing  delight  the  letters  of  Madame  de 
Sevigne,  I  put  her  second  as  a  writer  of  letters  to  the 
great  St.  Paul.  The  letters  of  Lord  Chesterfield 
to  his  sons  came  next,  I  think;  long  after,  Andrew 
Lang's  "Letters  to  Dead  Authors,"  and  a  very  great 
letter  I  found  in  an  English  translation  of  Balzac's 
"Le  Lys  dans  la  Vallee." 

It  must  not  be  understood  that  I  put  St.  Paul 
in  the  same  category  with  these  mundane  persons. 
Nevertheless,  I  found  St.  Paul  very  often  reason- 
ably mundane.  He  preferred  to  work  as  a  tent- 
maker  rather  than  take  money  from  his  clients, 
and  one  could  imagine  him  as  preaching  while  he 
worked.  He  frankly  made  collections  for  needy 
churches,  and  he  was  very  grateful  to  Phoebe  for 
remembering  that  he  was  a  hungry  man  and  in 
need  of  homely  hospitality.  He  was  interested  in 
his  fellow  passengers  Aquilla  and  Priscilla  whom  he 
met  on  board  the  ship  that  was  taking  them  from 
Corinth  to  Ephesus.  It  was  evident  that  they 
had  not  been  able  to  make  their  salt  in  Corinth, 
where,  however,  their  poverty  had  not  interfered 
with  their  zeal  in  the  cause  of  Christ.  Any  tent 
marked  "Ephesus"  was  sure  to  have  a  good  sale 
anywhere.     The    tents    from    Ephesus    were    as 


MY  BOYHOOD  HEADING  45 

fashionable  as  the  purple  from  Tyre,  and  St. 
Paul  was  pleased  that  his  two  disciples  should  have 
a  chance  of  being  more  prosperous.  I  always  felt, 
too,  that,  in  his  practical  way,  he  knew  that 
Ephesus  would  give  him  a  better  chance  of  sup- 
porting himself. 

That  Saul  of  Tarsus  had  not  lacked  for  luxuries 
in  his  youth,  one  easily  guessed.  It  was  plain,  too, 
that  he  had  had  the  best  possible  instructors,  and 
I  liked  to  believe,  when  I  was  young,  that  his 
muscles  had  been  well  trained  in  the  sports  of 
gentlemen  of  his  class.  Altogether,  so  graphic  were 
his  descriptions  and  so  potent  his  personality  that, 
while  Julius  Csesar  and  Brutus  receded,  he  filled 
the  foreground,  and  all  the  more  because  at  this 
time  I  picked  up  an  English  translation  of  Sueto- 
nius, just  by  chance  one  dark  winter  day,  and  as  I 
had  not  yet  discovered  that  Suetonius  was  a 
"yellow"  gossip,  my  idols,  some  of  the  Roman 
heroes,  received  a  great  shock. 

The  constant  reading  of  St.  Paul  led  me  to  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles,  and  I  found  St.  Luke  very 
good  reading,  though  I  often  wished  that,  as  I 
understood  he  had  some  reputation  as  an  artist, 
he  had  adorned  his  writings  with  illustrations. 


46    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

It  was  a  great  shock  to  discover  that  none  of 
the  Apostles  wrote  in  English,  for  it  seemed  to  me 
that  their  styles  were  as  different  from  one  another 
as  any  styles  could  be,  and  as  I,  having  lived  a 
great  part  of  my  time  in  classes  where  Nepos  and 
Caesar  were  translated  by  my  dear  young  friends, 
had  very  little  confidence  in  the  work  of  any  trans- 
lator, I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  God  had  taken 
special  care  of  the  translators  of  the  Bible,  for  I 
could  not  help  believing  that  He  had  no  interest 
whatever  in  the  translations  which  we  made  daily 
for  the  impatient  ears  of  our  instructors! 

One  could  not  help  loving  St.  Paul,  too,  because 
he  was  such  a  good  fighter.  When  he  said  he 
fought  with  beasts,  I  was  quite  sure  that  these 
beasts  were  the  unreasonable  and  unrighteous  per- 
sons who  persecuted  and  contradicted  him.  No 
obstacle  deterred  him,  and  he  was  gentle,  too,  al- 
though he  called  things  by  their  right  names  and 
his  denunciations  were  so  vivid  and  mouthfilling 
that  you  knew  his  enemies  must  have  been  afraid 
to  open  their  lips  while  he  was  near  them,  whatever 
they  might  have  said  behind  his  back. 

My  devotion  to  St.  Paul  brought  me  into  dis- 
repute one  Friday  at  school  when  discipline  was 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  47 

relaxed,  and  the  teacher  condescended  to  con- 
versation. We  were  asked  who  was  our  favourite 
hero,  and  when  it  came  to  my  turn  I  answered 
"St.  Paul."  As  George  Washington,  Abraham 
Lincoln,  Thomas  Jefferson,  General  Grant,  Gen- 
eral Lee,  Napoleon,  and  Alexander  the  Great,  had 
walked  in  procession  before  I  produced  my  hero, 
I  was  looked  on  as  rather  weakminded.  The 
teacher,  too,  seemed  astonished,  and  he  asked  me 
on  what  grounds  I  founded  my  worship.  This 
question,  coming  suddenly,  petrified  me  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  I  answered,  "He  fought  with  beasts." 
This  was  taken  as  a  personal  allusion  by  some  of  my 
dear  comrades  with  whom  I  had  had  altercations, 
and  I  was  made  to  suffer  for  it  as  much  as  these 
dear  comrades  deemed  prudent.  However,  they 
discovered  that  I  had  "language"  on  my  side,  for 
on  the  next  composition  day,  when  we  read  aloud 
the  work  of  our  brains,  I  accused  them  of  "being 
filled  with  all  iniquity,"  and  other  evil  things 
which  brought  down  a  horrified  remonstrance 
from  the  teacher,  who  was  unaccustomed  to  such 
plain  English,  but  he  was  knocked  high  and  dry 
by  the  proof  that  I  was  only  quoting  St.  Paul  to 
the  Romans. 


48     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Perhaps  I  became  too  familiar  with  St.  Paul. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  I  regarded  him  as  a  very  good 
friend  indeed,  for  some  of  his  "language,"  quoted 
in  times  of  crisis,  produced  a  much  better  effect  on 
one's  enemies  than  any  swear  word  that  could  be 
invented.  I  am  not  excusing  my  attitude  toward 
the  Bible,  but  merely  explaining  how  it  affected 
my  youthful  mind.  There  was  something  ex- 
tremely romantic  in  the  very  phrase,  "the  tumult 
of  the  silversmiths"  at  Ephesus.  It  seemed  to 
mean  a  whole  chapter  of  a  novel  in  itself. 

And  there  was  the  good  centurion — Christ  al- 
ways seemed  to  have  a  sympathy  for  soldiers — who 
was  willing  to  save  Paul  when  the  ship,  on  its  way 
to  Rome,  was  run  aground.  So  he  reached  Melita 
where  the  amiable  barbarians  showed  him  no 
small  courtesy.  And  one  could  not  help  liking  the 
Romans;  that  is,  the  official  Romans,  even  Felix, 
whose  wife  was  a  Jew  like  St.  Paul,  and  who,  dis- 
gusted when  the  Apostle  spoke  to  him  of  chastity 
and  of  justice  to  come,  yet  hoped  that  money 
would  be  given  him  by  Paul,  and  frequently  sent 
for,  and  often  spoke  with  him.  And  how  fine 
seemed  the  Apostle's  belief  in  his  nobility  as  a 
Roman   citizen!     He    rendered    unto    Caesar   the 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  49 

things  that  were  Caesar's.  And  one  could  easily 
imagine  the  pomp  and  circumstance  when  x\grippa 
and  Bernice  entered  into  the  hall  of  audience  with 
the  tribunes  and  principal  men  of  the  city!  And 
one  could  hear  St.  Paul  saying,  protecting  himself 
nobly,  through  the  nobility  of  a  Roman  law : 

For  it  seemeth  to  me  unreasonable  to  send  a  prisoner  and  not 
to  signify  the  things  laid  to  his  charge, 

and  Agrippa's  answer,  after  Paul's  apologia: 

In  a  little  thou  persuadest  me  to  become  a  Christian! 

But  the  story  did  not  end  then.  I  rehearsed 
over  and  over  again  what  the  King  Agrippa 
might  have  said  to  his  sister,  the  noble  and 
beautiful  Bernice — I  knew  nothing  of  the  lady's 
reputation  then — and  how  finally  they  did  become 
Christians.  In  my  imagination,  princely  dignity 
and  exquisite  grace  were  added  to  the  external 
beauty  of  religion;  and  Paul  went  to  Rome  pro- 
tected by  the  law  of  the  Romans.  And  yet  the 
very  fineness  of  his  attitude  was  the  cause  of  his 
further  imprisonment.  "This  man,"  I  often  re- 
peated with  Agrippa,  "might  have  been  set  at 
liberty,  if  he  had  not  appealed  to  Caesar." 

It  was  St.  Paul  who  sent  me  back  to  the  Prophet 


50    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Micheas,  who  had  previously  struck  me  as  of  no 
importance  at  all,  and  I  read: 

And  Thou,  Bethlehem  Ephrata,  art  a  little  one  among  the 
thousands  of  Juda;  out  of  thee  shall  he  come  forth  unto  me 
that  is  to  be  the  ruler  in  Israel;  and  his  going  forth  is  from 
the  beginning,  from  the  days  of  eternity. 

And  back  again  to  St.  Matthew — 

But  they  said  to  him:  In  Bethlehem  of  Juda;  For  so  it  is 
written  by  the  prophet;  And  thou,  Bethlehem,  the  land  of 
Juda,  art  not  the  least  among  the  princes  of  Juda;  for  out  of 
thee  shall  come  forth  the  captain,  who  shall  rule  my  people 
Israel. 

These  exercises  in  completing  the  prophecies  of 
the  Old  Testament  with  the  fulfilments  of  the  New 
were  interesting,  and  I  found  great  pleasure  in 
them.  And  this  led  me  to  a  greater  appreciation 
of  the  Old  Testament,  against  which  I  had  been 
once  rather  prejudiced.  One  day,  I  was  led,  by 
some  reference  or  other  in  another  book,  to  read 
the  twenty-third  psalm  of  David,  in  the  King 
James  version.  It  struck  me  as  much  more 
simple  and  appealing  than  the  version  in  the 
Douai  Bible,  which  begins  in  Latin  "Dominus 
regit  me"     It  runs: 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  51 

The  Lord  ruleth  me:  and  I  shall  want  nothing. 

2  He  hath  set  me  in  a  place  of  pasture. 

He  hath  brought  me  up,  on  the  water  of  refreshment: 

3  He  hath  converted  my  soul.     He  hath  led  me  on  the  paths 
of  justice,  for  his  own  name's  sake. 

4  For  though  I  should  walk  in  the  midst  of  the  shadow  of 
death,  I  fear  no  evils,  for  thou  art  with  me. 

Thy  rod  and  thy  staff,  they  have  comforted  me. 

5  Thou  hast  prepared  a  table  before  me,  against  them  that 
afflict  me. 

Thou  hast  anointed  my  head  with  oil :  and  my  chalice  which 

inebriateth  me  how  goodly  is  it. 

And  thy  mercy  will  follow  me  all  the  days  of  my  life. 

And  that  I  may  dwell  in  the  house  of  the  Lord,  unto  length 

of  days. 

In  the  Douai  version  this  psalm  was  called  the 
twenty-second. 

Without  any  special  guidance — I  think  most  of 
my  teachers  would  have  looked  on  as  dangerous 
any  attempt  to  ally  English  literature  with  the 
Bible — 5  soon  discovered  that  nearly  everything 
I  read  owed  something  to  the  Bible.  At  first,  the 
comparison  of  the  twenty-third  psalm  in  the  King 
James  version  enraptured  me  so  much  that  I  began 
to  find  fault  with  the  Latinized  phrases  of  the  Vul- 
gate in  English.     It  was  the  fashion  in  the  early 


52    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

seventies  to  be  very  Saxon  in  speech,  especially  in 
the  little  group  at  school  interested  in  English 
literature.  Street  cars  at  this  time  were  com- 
paratively new  in  Philadelphia,  and  I  think  we 
reached  the  last  extremity  of  Saxonism  in  speech 
when  we  spoke  of  them  as  "folk  wains."  The 
tide  then  turned  toward  the  Latins;  and  I  pre- 
ferred the  Book  of  Job  and  the  story  of  Ruth  in 
the  Latinized  version,  because  the  words  were  more 
mouth  filling,  and  because  it  was  very  difficult  to 
translate  everything  into  a  bald  "early  English  me- 
dium", which  for  a  time  I  had  been  trying  to  do. 
It  was  Keats's  lovely  phrase  "amid  the  alien  corn" 
which  sent  me  back  to  "Ruth";  and  a  quotation 
in  Quackenbos's  "Rhetoric" — "Can'st  thou  hook 
the  Leviathan"  which  made  me  revel  in  "Job." 

Something  Meg  Merrilies  said  bore  me  on 
toward  the  roaring  storm  of  Isaiah.  The  Latinized 
medium  seemed  to  suit  his  denunciations  best ;  and 
then,  besides,  I  found  more  illuminating  foot- 
notes in  the  Douai  version  than  in  the  King  James. 
In  both  versions,  some  passages  were  so  obscure 
that  I  often  wondered  how  anybody  could  get  any 
meaning  out  of  them.  I  was  often  astonished  to 
find  in  English  novels  that  the  old  people  in  the 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  53 

cottages  were  soothed  by  texts,  quoted  at  a  great 
length,  out  of  which  I  could  make  nothing,  so  I 
limited  myself  to  the  Douai  version,  which  I 
found  more  illuminating. 

Whether  my  system  of  reading  is  to  be  com- 
mended or  not  to  young  persons,  I  am  not  pre- 
pared to  say,  but  for  me  it  made  the  Bible  a  really 
live  book.  To  be  frank,  and  perhaps  shocking  at 
the  same  time — if  anybody  had  asked  me  whether, 
being  marooned  on  an  island,  I  should  have  most 
preferred  the  Bible  in  my  loneliness,  I  should 
promptly  have  answered  "No."  At  this  age 
"Nicholas  Nickleby"  or  "Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,"  or  "The  Tempest,"  or  "As  You  Like 
it,"  or  Macaulay's  "Lays  of  Ancient  Rome," 
would  have  suited  me  better,  provided,  of  course, 
that  I  could  have  chosen  only  one  book. 

It  was  borne  in  on  me  many  times  that  no 
author  could  improve  on  the  phrasing  of  the 
Bible.  Both  in  the  Vulgate  and  the  King  James 
versions  there  are  passages  which,  leaving  aside 
all  question  of  doctrine,  it  is  sacrilege  to  try  to  im- 
prove. The  French  translation  of  the  Bible  is,  as 
everybody  knows,  very  paraphrastic,  and  that 
may  account  for  the  fact  that,  while  regarded  as  a 


54    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

precious  depository  of  doctrine,  it  is  not  a  house- 
hold book,  and  the  dreadfully  dull  interpretations 
of  Clement  Marot — called  hymns — naturally  bored 
a  people  who,  in  their  hearts,  believe  that  God 
listens  more  amiably  to  petitions  uttered  in  the 
language  of  the  Academy!  In  their  novels,  deal- 
ing with  the  beginnings  of  Christianity — and  there 
are  many  such  novels  in  French  unknown  in 
other  countries — it  is  hard  for  a  French  author 
not  to  be  rhetorical,  in  the  manner  of  the  writer 
of  "Ben  Hur"  when  the  death  of  Christ  is  de- 
scribed. No  human  author  could  improve  on 
the  words  of  the  Vulgate,  or  the  words  of  the  King 
James  version.  What  young  heart  can  ponder  over 
these  words,  without  a  thrill,  St.  John  XIX 
(Douai  version:  1609;  Rheims;  1582): 

When  Jesus  therefore  had  seen  his  Mother  and  the  disciple 
standing  whom  he  loved,  he  saith  to  his  Mother:  Woman, 
behold  thy  son. 

After  that,  he  saith  to  the  disciple,  Behold  thy  mother. 
And  from  that  day  the  disciple  took  her  to  his  own. 

Afterwards,  Jesus  knowing  that  all  things  were  now  ac- 
complished, that  the  Scripture  might  be  fulfilled,  said:  I 
thirst. 

Now  there  was  a  vessel  set  there  full  of  vinegar,  and  they, 
putting  a  sponge  full  of  vinegar  about  hyssop,  put  it  to  his 
mouth. 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  55 

And  Jesus  therefore  when  he  had  taken  the  vinegar,  said, 
it  is  consummated,  and  bowing  his  head,  gave  up  the  ghost. 

When  Marie  Corelli  became  a  popular  author, 
there  were  persons  existing — happily,  they  have 
all  gone  to  the  great  beyond — who  thought  that 
the  "talented"  author  could  have  done  better! 

Essays  and  Essayists 

I  am  aware  that  many  persons  look  on  Emerson 
as  somewhat  dangerous  reading  for  a  boy  of  sixteen. 
The  mothers  and  fathers  of  my  Baptist  friends  and 
the  uncle  of  my  Methodist  cousins  forbade  the 
reading  of  Emerson  because  of  his  Unitarianism ; 
but,  as  the  rector  of  our  parish  never  denounced 
Unitarians  from  the  altar,  though  he  frequently 
offered  his  compliments  to  Martin  Luther,  I  paid 
no  attention  whatever  to  these  objections.  I  trust 
that  I  am  not  defending  the  miscellaneous  reading 
of  my  boyhood;  I  do  not  recommend  this  course 
to  the  approval  of  parents  and  guardians;  I  am 
simply  expressing  the  impression  that  certain  books 
made  on  my  youthful  mind  and  heart;  for,  though 
I  never  said  so  in  words,  the  books  I  liked  were 
always  nearer  to  my  heart  than  to  my  mind.  I 
owe  a  great  debt  to  Emerson. 


56    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

It  was  on  a  hot  afternoon  during  the  summer 
vacation  that,  near  sundown,  sitting  on  the  warm 
marble  steps  of  our  house,  I  dipped  into  an  early 
edition  of  Emerson.  I  felt  inspired  at  once  to 
think  great  thoughts  and  to  do  good  things,  to 
lift  myself  above  the  petty  things  of  the  earth,  and 
to  feel  that  to  be  an  American  was  to  be  at  once 
proud  and  humble.  Emerson's  abrupt  sentences, 
like  a  number  of  brilliants  set  close  together,  re- 
minded me  of  "Proverbs" ;  but  the  Book  of  Proverbs 
did  not  get  so  near  to  my  actual  life  as  the  essays 
of  Emerson.  I  liked  the  lessons  that  he  drew  from 
the  lives  of  great  men.  I  was  shocked  when  he 
mentioned  Confucius  and  Plato  in  the  same  breath 
as  Christ;  but  I  was  amiably  tolerant,  for  I  felt 
that  he  had  never  had  the  privilege  of  studying  the 
Little  Catechism,  and  I  thought  of  writing  to  him 
on  the  subject.  But  somebody  told  me  that  he 
was  an  "American  Classic"  and,  from  that,  I  con- 
cluded he  was  dead,  and  had  doubtless  already 
found  out  his  mistake. 

Perhaps  I  might  have  been  better  engaged  in 
reading  the  more  practical  books  offered  to  boys 
in  our  own  time,  if  we  had  had  them.  There  were 
some  books  then  on  scientific  subjects,  reduced  to 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  57 

the  comprehension  of  the  young;  but  not  so  many 
as  there  are  now.  One  of  my  uncles  recommended 
the  works  of  Samuel  Smiles — "Self-Help"  I  think 
was  his  favourite;  but  Samuel  Smiles  never  ap- 
pealed to  me.  My  small  allowance,  paid  weekly, 
could  not  have  been  affected  by  "Thrift",  and 
when  my  u»cle  quoted  passages  from  this  tiresome 
book  I  astounded  him  by  replying,  in  a  phrase 
I  wrongly  attributed  to  the  adorable  Emerson, 
that  if  I  had  a  quarter  to  spend  instead  of  twelve 
cents,  I  would  give  half  of  it  for  a  hyacinth!  My 
miserly  uncle  said  it  sounded  just  like'  Mohammed, 
and  that  Emerson  had  doubtless  found  it  in  that 
dangerous  book,  the  Koran. 

I  cannot  imagine  any  other  author  doing  for  me 
just  what  the  essays  of  Emerson  did.  In  the  first 
place,  they  seemed  to  me  to  be  really  American; 
in  the  second,  and  largely  because  of  their  quality, 
they  offered  an  antidote  to  the  materialism  in  the 
very  air,  which  had  succeeded  the  Civil  War.  At 
this  time  there  was  much  talk  of  money  and  luxury 
everywhere  about  us.  Even  in  our  quiet  neigh- 
bourhood, where  simple  living  was  the  rule,  many 
had  burst  into  ostentation,  and  moved  away  into 
newer  and  more  pretentious  quarters,  and  there 


58    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

was  a  rumour  that  some  of  these  sought  un- 
limited opportunities  for  extravagant  expenditure. 
We  saw  them  driving  in  new  carriages,  and  con- 
descendingly stopping  before  the  white  doors  and 
the  green  window-shutters  of  our  old-fashioned 
colonial  houses.  They  had  made  money  through 
the  war.  For  the  first  time  in  our  lives  we  boys 
heard  of  money  making  as  the  principal  aim  of 
life.  The  fact  that  these  successful  persons  were 
classed  as  "shoddy"  did  not  lessen  the  value  of 
the  auriferous  atmosphere  about  us.  Emerson 
was  a  corrective  to  this  materialism.  As  to  his 
philosophy  or  theology,  that  did  not  concern  me 
any  more  than  the  religious  opinions  of  Julius 
Caesar,  whose  "Commentaries"  I  was  obliged  to 
read.  Emerson  gave  me  a  taste  for  the  reading  of 
essay. 

By  chance  I  fell  upon  some  essays  of  Carlyle. 
The  inflation  of  his  style  did  not  deter  me  from 
thoroughly  enjoying  the  paper  on  "Novalis." 
That  on  "  Cagliostro,"  however,  was  my  favourite. 
It  introduced  me  intimately  to  the  French  Revo- 
lution. I  disliked  this  great  charlatan  for  his 
motto,  "Tread  the  lilies  under  foot."  I  was  for 
the  Bourbons!    The  French  Revolution,  as  a  fact, 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  59 

was  very  near  to  me.  My  mother  had  been  born 
(in  Philadelphia)  in  1819,  and  my  great-uncle  and 
my  grandfather  had  lived  through  the  French  Revo- 
lution. There  was  a  legend,  moreover — probably 
the  same  legend  exists  in  every  family  of  Irish 
descent  whose  connections  had  lived  in  France — 
that  one  of  them  had  been  a  clerk  to  Fabre  d'Eglan- 
tine,  and  had  spent  his  time  in  crossing  off  the 
list  of  the  condemned  the  names  of  the  Irish- 
French  aristocrats  and  substituting  in  their  place 
others  that  did  not  happen  to  belong  to  Celts ! 

In  spite  of  the  Little  Catechism  and  the  up- 
lifting influence  of  Emerson,  I  looked  on  this 
probably  mythical  gentleman  as  one  of  the  glories 
of  our  family.  And  then  there  was  an  old  man — 
very  old — who  walked  up  and  down  Sixth  Street 
with  his  head  wrapped  in  a  bandanna  handkerchief , 
bearing  a  parrot  on  his  shoulder.  The  boys  of 
the  neighbourhood  believed  that  he  was  Sanson,  the 
executioner  of  Louis  XVI.  and  Marie  Antoinette. 
We  shivered  when  we  saw  him;  but  we  boasted  of 
his  existence  in  our  neighbourhood,  all  the  same. 
After  I  had  read  "Cagliostro"  I  devoured  every 
line  on  the  subject  of  the  French  Revolution  I 
could  find.     It  seemed  to  me  that  I  would  have 


60    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

been  willing  to  give  five  years  out  of  my  life  to 
have  lived  in  Paris  during  those  horrors,  and  to 
have  rescued  Marie  Antoinette  and  the  Princess 
Elizabeth!  Such  brutalities  seemed  impossible 
in  our  time;  and  yet  I  have  since  lived  very  near 
to  friends  who  went  through  even  greater  horrors 
in  Russia — the  Baroness  Sophie  de  Buxhoevenden, 
second  lady-in-waiting  to  the  Czarina,  for  instance, 
whose  letters  lie  before  me  as  I  write. 

In  spite  of  my  taste  for  Carlyle,  which  induced 
me  to  dip  into  Jean  Paul  Richter,  of  whose  writ- 
ings I  remember  only  one  line, 

I  love  God  and  little  children, 

I  did  not  get  very  far  into  his  "French  Revolu- 
tion." It  seemed  then  an  unreal  and  lurid  book. 
Emerson  led  to  Montaigne,  whose  essays,  in  an 
old  edition  which  I  had  from  the  Mechanics'  In- 
stitute, of  which  my  father  was  a  committeeman, 
delighted  me  beyond  words.  I  liked  Emerson's 
essay  on  "Friendship"  better  than  his,  but  for 
wit,  quick  repartee,  general  cheerfulness,  he  re- 
minded me  of  my  favourite  heroine  in  literature, 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  Catherine  Seton !  Later,  I  read 
with   astonishment    that   Montaigne   was   an  un- 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  61 

believer,  a  skeptic,  almost  a  cynic.  I  was  ex- 
tremely indignant;  he  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  very 
pious  gentleman,  with  that  wit  and  humour 
which  I  seldom  found  in  professedly  pious  books; 
and  to  this  day  I  cannot  hear  Montaigne  talked 
of  as  a  precursor  of  Voltaire  without  believing 
that  there  is  something  crooked  in  the  mind  of  the 
talker.  So  much  for  the  impressions  made  in  youth, 
so  much  for  the  long,  long  thoughts  of  which  Long- 
fellow sings. 

Who  is  more  amusingly  cheerful  than  Mon- 
taigne, who  more  amusingly  wise,  who  so  well  bred 
and  attractive,  who  knew  the  world  better  and 
took  it  only  as  the  world?  Give  me  the  old  volume 
of  Montaigne  and  a  loaf  of  bread — no  Victrola 
singing  to  me  in  the  wilderness ! — a  thermos  bottle, 
and  one  or  two  other  things,  and  I  can  still  spend 
the  day  in  any  wild  place!  I  did  not,  of  course, 
know,  in  those  early  days,  what  in  his  flavour  at- 
tracted me.  Afterward,  I  found  that  it  was  the 
very  flavour  and  essence  of  Old  France.  Carlyle's 
impressions  of  historical  persons  interested  me,  but 
Montaigne  was  the  most  actual  of  living  persons 
who  spoke  to  me  in  a  voice  I  recognized  as  wholly 
his.     To  be  sure,  I  read  him  in  Florio's  translation. 


62    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

I  think  it  was  about  this  time,  too,  that  I  dis- 
covered a  very  modern  writer,  who  charmed  me 
very  greatly.  It  was  Justin  McCarthy  who  con- 
tributed a  series  of  sketches  of  great  men  of  the 
day  to  a  magazine  called  the  Galaxy.  He  "did" 
Victor  Emmanuel  and  Pope  Pius  IX.  and  Bis- 
marck, and  many  other  of  the  worthies  of  the 
times.  Nothing  that  he  wrote  before  or  after  this 
pleased  me  at  all;  but  these  sketches  were  so  in- 
teresting and  apparently  so  true  that  they  really 
became  part  of  my  life.  If  I  had.  been  asked  at 
this  time  who  was  my  favourite  of  all  modern 
authors,  and  what  the  name  of  the  composer  I 
admired  most,  I  should  have  said  Justin  McCarthy 
and  Offenbach!  I  regarded  "Voici  le  Sabre"  in 
"La  Grande  Duchesse"  as  a  masterpiece  only  to 
be  compared  to  an  "Ave  Verum,"  by  Pergolesi, 
which  was  often  sung  in  St.  Philip's  Church  at  the 
Offertory!  A  strange  mixture,  but  the  truth  is 
the  truth.  Although  I  have  not  been  able  to 
find  Justin  McCarthy's  series  of  sketches,  they 
still  hold  a  sweet  place  in  my  memory.  Perhaps, 
like  other  masterpieces  that  one  loves  in  youth, 
one  would  now  find  them  like  those  beautiful 
creatures  of  the  sea   that   seem  to  be  vermilion 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  63 

and  purple  and  gold  under  the  waves,  but  are 
drab  and  ugly  things  when  taken  out  of  the  water. 
This  applies  to  some  books  that  one  reads  with 
pleasure  in  early  days,  and  wonders,  later,  how 
they  were  endured ! 

There  were  not  so  many  outdoor  books  in  the 
late  '60's  as  there  are  now.  We  were  all  sent  to 
Thoreau's  "Walden"  and  Dana's  "Two  Years 
Before  the  Mast."  "Walden"  I  learned  to  like, 
but  I  much  preferred  Fenimore  Cooper's  descrip- 
tion of  nature.  "Walden"  struck  me  as  the  book 
of  a  man  playing  at  out-of-doors,  imagining  his 
wildness,  and  never  really  liking  to  be  too  far  from 
the  town.  Singularly  enough,  it  was  not  until  I 
discovered  Hamerton's  "A  Painter's  Camp"  that 
I  began  to  see  that  nature  had  beauties  in  all 
weathers.  In  truth,  I  hate  to  confess  that  nature 
alone  never  appealed  to  me.  A  landscape  with- 
out human  beings  seemed  deadly  dull;  and  I  did 
not  understand  until  I  grew  much  older  that  I 
had  really  believed  that  good  art  was  an  improve- 
ment on  nature. 

I  have  not  the  slightest  idea  in  what  light  the 
modern  critics  see  the  works  of  Philip  Gilbert 
Hamerton.     I  tried  to  read  one  of  his  novels  re- 


64    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

cently,  and  failed;  but  let  me  say  that,  allowing 
for  receptivity  and  what  one  may  call  tempera- 
ment, I  know  of  no  book  more  revealing  as  to  the 
relations  of  nature  and  art  than  "A  Painter's 
Camp."  I  recall  vividly  the  words  of  the  be- 
ginning of  the  preface  to  the  first  edition: 

It  is  known  to  all  who  are  acquainted  with  the  present 
condition  of  the  fine  arts  in  England  that  landscape-painters 
rely  less  on  memory  and  invention  than  formerly,  and  that 
their  work  from  nature  is  much  more  laborious  than  it  used 
to  be. 

I  had  seen  so  many  pictures  that  seemed  to  be 
"made  up"  in  the  artist's  studio  and  I  knew  so 
well  from  my  experience  in  the  drawing  classes 
at  school,  how  nature  was  neglected  for  artifi- 
cial models,  that  I  hailed  these  words  with  great 

joy- 

Everything  in  life  was  rather  conventional,  rather 
fixed,  for  the  Centennial  Exhibition  in  Philadel- 
phia, to  which  our  country  owes  the  beginning  of 
the  aesthetic  awakening,  had  not  yet  taken  place. 
It  may  seem  strange  to  this  generation  that  we 
were  limited  to  the  wood-cuts  in  Godey's  Lady's 
Book,  the  illustrations  in  Harper  s  Magazine,  and 
an  occasional  picture  in  some  short-lived  periodi- 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  65 

cal.  The  reign  of  the  chromo  had  just  begun. 
Rogers's  groups  were  a  fixture  in  nearly  every  self- 
respecting  house,  though  I  am  glad  to  say,  in  my 
own  family,  very  good  casts  of  the  Clytie  and  the 
Discus-thrower  filled  their  place.  My  father  greatly 
admired  Power's  Greek  Slave,  whose  praises  had 
been  celebrated  in  the  Cosmopolitan  Magazine;  but 
my  mother  regarded  it  as  almost  "improper." 

Nearly  every  youth  of  my  generation,  in  Phila- 
delphia, wanted  not  exactly  something  better,  but 
something  more  vivid.  There  were  few  sports; 
long  walks  and  a  little  cricket  supplied  the  place 
of  the  coining  baseball  and  tennis. 

In  his  "Steeplejack,"  James  Huneker  speaks  of 
his  weekly  walks  with  Mr.  Edward  Roth,  the  head 
of  a  military  school  and  the  author  of  "Christus 
Judex."  I,  too,  looked  on  these  walks  with  an 
occasional  row  on  the  Schuylkill  with  him  as  the 
best  part  of  my  education.  But  this  was  later. 
All  we  could  do,  then,  in  our  moments  of  leisure, 
was  to  walk  and  talk  and  read. 

The  cult  of  the  out-of-doors  had  not  yet  begun 
to  be  developed.  The  beginning  of  "A  Painter's 
Camp"  was  most  attractive  to  my  thirsty  soul. 
Mr.  Hamerton  says: 


66    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

I  had  a  wild  walk  yesterday.  I  have  a  notion  of  encamping 
on  the  Boulsworth  moors  to  study  heather;  and  heartily 
tired  of  being  caged  up  here  in  my  library,  with  nothing  to 
see  but  wet  garden-walks  and  dripping  yew  trees,  and  a  sun- 
dial whereon  no  shadow  had  fallen  the  livelong  day,  I  de- 
termined, in  spite  of  the  rain  to  be  off  to  the  moors  to  choose 
a  site  for  my  encampment.  Not  very  far  from  this  house 
still  dwells  an  old  servant  of  my  uncle's  with  whom  I  am  on 
the  friendliest  terms.  So  I  called  upon  this  neighbour  on 
my  way  and  asked  him  if  he  would  take  a  walk  with  me  to 
the  hills.  Jamie  stared  a  little  and  remarked  that  "it  ur 
feefi  weet"  but  accompanied  me  nevertheless,  and  a  very 
pleasant  walk  we  had  of  it. 


Hamerton  opened  his  book  in  Jane  Eyre's  coun- 
try; our  family  had  lately  read  "Jane  Eyre." 
This  added  interest  to  the  volume,  and  there 
came  the  details  of  the  invention  of  the  new  hut, 
intended  to  be  a  shelter  against  all  weathers,  so 
that  the  artist  might  study  nature  on  intimate 
terms.  He  made  it  in  order  to  paint  the  heather 
at  close  range.  Now,  this  was  a  revelation!  It 
had  never  hitherto  occurred  to  me  that  the  heather 
changes  its  aspect  day  by  day,  or  indeed  that  our 
pet  place  of  beauty,  the  Wissahickon  Creek,  or 
river  if  you  like,  was  not  the  same  every  day 
in  the  year  except  when  the  ice  bound  it!  This 
may   seem   a   rather    stupid    state   of    mind;    but 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  67 

it  is  the  stupidity  that  is  very  common.  I  could 
understand  how  interesting  it  would  be  to  be  in 
snow-fall  while  yet  safely  out  of  it.  Mr.  Hamerton 
thus  described  his  hut: 

It  consists  entirely  of  panels,  of  which  the  largest  are  two 
feet  six  inches  square:  these  panels  can  be  carried  separately 
on  packhorses,  or  even  on  men's  backs,  and  then  united  to- 
gether by  iron  bolts  into  a  strong  little  building.  Four  of 
the  largest  panels  serve  as  windows,  being  each  of  them 
filled  with  a  large  pane  of  excellent  plate-glass.  When 
erected,  the  walls  present  a  perfectly  smooth  surface  outside, 
and  a  panelled  interior;  the  floor  being  formed  in  exactly  the 
same  manner,  with  the  panelled  or  coffered  side  turned 
towards  the  earth,  and  the  smooth  surface  uppermost.  By 
this  arrangement  all  the  wall-bolts  are  inside,  and  those  of 
the  floor  underneath  it,  which  protects  them  not  only  from 
the  weather  but  from  theft,  an  iron  bolt  being  a  great  tempta- 
tion to  country  people  on  account  of  its  convenience  and 
utility.  The  walls  are  bolted  to  the  floor,  which  gives 
great  strength  to  the  whole  structure,  and  the  panels  are 
carefully  ordered,  like  the  stones  in  a  well-built  wall,  so  that 
the  joints  of  the  lower  course  of  panels  do  not  fall  below  those 
of  the  upper.  The  roof  is  arched  and  provides  a  current  of 
fresh  air,  by  placing  ventilators  at  each  end  of  the  arch, 
which  insures  a  current  without  inconvenience  to  the  occu- 
pant. 

The  chapters  on  "Concerning  Moonlight  in  Old 
Castles,"  "The  Coming  of  the  Clouds,"  and  the 
little  sketches,  like  "Loch  Awe  after  Sunset,  Sept. 


68    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

23,  1860,"  enchanted  me.  It  had  not  before 
struck  me  that  Loch  Awe  was  different  on  Sep- 
tember 23,  1860,  from  what  it  was  at  other  times, 
or — to  carry  the  idea  further — that  the  imperial 
Delaware  had  changed  since  that  momentous  time 
when  George  Washington  crossed  it,  or  the  Schuyl- 
kill since  Tom  Moore  looked  upon  it. 
To  quote  further: 

The  mountain  is  green-grey,  colder  and  greener  towards 
the  summit.  All  details  of  field  and  wood  are  dimly  visible. 
Two  islands  nearer  me  are  distinct  against  the  hill,  but  their 
foliage  seems  black,  and  no  details  are  visible  in  them.  The 
sky  is  all  clouded  over.  From  the  horizon  to  the  zenith  it 
is  one  veil  of  formless  vapour. 

And: 

There  is  one  streak  of  dead  calm,  which  reflects  the  green 
mountain  perfectly  from  edge  to  edge  of  it.  There  is  another 
calm  shaped  like  a  great  river,  which  is  all  green,  touched 
with  crimson.  Besides  these  there  are  delicate  half  calms, 
just  dulled  over  with  faint  breathings  of  the  evening  air; 
these,  for  the  most  part  being  violet  (from  the  sky),  except 
at  a  distance,  where  they  take  a  deep  crimson;  and  there  is 
one  piece  of  crimson  calm  near  me  set  between  a  faint  violet 
breeze  and  a  calm  of  a  different  violet.  There  are  one  or 
two  breezes  sufficiently  strong  to  cause  ripple,  and  these 
rippled  spaces  take  the  dull  grey  slate  of  the  upper  sky. 

Realise  this  picture  as  well  as  you  may  be  able,  and  then 
put  in  the  final  touch.     Between  the  dull  calms  and  the 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  69 

glassy  calms  there  are  drawn  thin  threads  of  division  burn- 
ing with  scarlet  fire. 

This  fire  is  of  course  got  from  the  lower  sky.  I  know 
whence  it  comes,  but  how  or  why  it  lies  in  those  thin  scarlet 
threads  there  where  it  is  most  wanted,  and  not  elsewhere,  I 
cannot  satisfactorily  explain. 

Then  there  was  a  delightful  and  illuminating 
chapter  called  "A  Stream  at  Rest."  Hamerton, 
who  is  probably  now  very  much  out  of  fashion, 
taught  me  the  necessity  of  beauty  in  life;  and,  as  an 
accessory  to  Emerson,  the  philosophy  of  enjoying 
the  little,  every-day  things.  It  was  Emerson  who, 
I  think,  said  first  to  me,  "Take  short  outlooks"; 
and  I  still  think  that  there  can  be  no  better  intro- 
duction to  a  consideration  of  the  relation  of  art  to 
nature  than  "A  Painter's  Camp."  It  was  "A 
Painter's  Camp"  which  led  me  to  "The  Intel- 
lectual Life."  There  is  a  particular  passage  in 
Hamerton's  chapter  on  "A  Little  French  City" 
that  emphasized  the  need  of  beauty. 

The  cathedral  is  all  poetry;  I  mean  that  every  part  of  it 
affects  our  emotional  nature  either  by  its  own  grandeur  or 
beauty,  or  by  its  allusion  to  histories  of  bright  virtue  or 
brave  fortitude.  And  this  emotional  result  is  independent 
of  belief  in  the  historical  truth  of  these  great  legends:  it 
would  be  stronger,  no  doubt,  if  we  believed  them,  but  we  are 
still  capable  of  feeling  their  solemn  poetry  and  large  signifi- 


70    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

cance  as  we  feel  the  poetry  and  significance  of  "Sir  Galahad" 
or  "The  Idylls  of  the  King." 

Some  persons  are  so  constituted  that  it  is  necessary  to 
their  happiness  to  live  near  some  noble  work  of  art  or  nature. 
A  mountain  is  satisfactory  to  them  because  it  is  great  and 
ever  new,  presenting  itself  every  hour  under  aspects  so  un- 
foreseen that  one  can  gaze  at  it  for  years  with  unflagging  in- 
terest. To  some  minds,  to  mine  amongst  others,  human 
life  is  scarcely  supportable  far  from  some  stately  and  mag- 
nificent object,  worthy  of  endless  study  and  admiration. 
But  what  of  life  in  the  plains?  Truly,  most  plains  are  dreary 
enough,  but  still  they  may  have  fine  trees,  or  a  cathedral. 
And  in  the  cathedral,  here,  I  find  no  despicable  compensation 
for  the  loss  of  dear  old  Ben  Cruacha. 

There  are  some  humorous  and  perhaps  even 
comic  passages  in  "The  Intellectual  Life";  these 
passages  are  unconsciously  humorous  or  comic,  as 
Mr.  Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton  seems  to  have  no 
sense  of  humour.  For  instance,  it  was  a  great  sur- 
prise to  me  to  discover  that  poverty  was  unfavour- 
able to  the  intellectual  life!  It  was  enlightening 
to  know  the  reason  why  a  man  should  wear  even- 
ing dress  after  six  o'clock,  and  why  the  sporting 
of  gray  clothes  in  the  evening  was  unworthy  of 
the  Intellectual!     Besides,  it  affects  the  character! 

And  letter  XI  "To  a  Master  of  Arts  who  said 
that  a  Certain  Distinguished  Painter  was  Half- 
educated,"    was    a    useful    antidote    to    youthful 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  71 

self-conceit.  I  had  not  reached  the  stage,  treated 
in  the  chapters  on  "Women  and  Marriage,"  "To  a 
Young  Gentleman  Who  Contemplated  Marriage," 
but  I  thought  the  author  very  wise  indeed,  and 
found  many  other  pages  which  were  intensely 
stimulating.  Let  others  decry  Hamerton  if  they 
like;  I  owe  a  great  deal  to  him;  and,  though  I 
might  be  induced  to  throw  "The  Intellectual  Life" 
to  the  Young  Wrolves  of  the  Beginning  of  this 
Century,  I  shall  always  insist  that  "A  Painter's 
Camp"  ought  to  be  included  in  every  list  of  books 
It  was  George  Eliot  who  sent  me  to  "The  Follow- 
ing of  Christ,"  and  she  interested  me  in  Saint  Teresa, 
that  illustrious  woman  so  well  compounded  of 
mysticism  and  common  sense,  of  whom,  however, 
I  could  find  no  good  "Life."  But  Thomas  a  Kempis 
was  a  revelation!  He  fitted  into  nearly  every 
crisis  of  the  soul,  but  all  his  words  are  not  for 
every-day  life.  He  seems  to  demand  too  much  of 
us  poor  folk  of  the  world.  Later,  I  came  to  under- 
stand that  the  counsel  of  perfection  which  Christ 
gave  to  the  rich  young  man  was  not  intended 
for  the  whole  world,  and  many  fine  passages  in 
A  Kempis  were  meant  for  finer  temperaments  than 
my  own. 


72    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Somebody  at  this  time  presented  me  with  a 
copy  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  I  found  him  dull, 
stale,  and  unprofitable  in  comparison  with  A  Kem- 
pis.  His  philosophy  of  life  seemed  to  lead  to 
nothing  except  the  cultivation  of  a  very  high 
opinion  of  oneself.  I  gave  this  conclusion  to  one 
of  my  English  friends,  who  objected  to  my  uncharted 
course  of  reading,  and  he  said,  "A  person  like 
you  who  finds  nothing  humorous  or  even  philo- 
sophical in  'Alice  in  Wonderland'  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  like  the  works  of  Marcus  Aurelius!" 

It  takes  a  prig  to  divide  his  reading  into  nicely 
staked  off  little  plots,  each  with  its  own  date. 
The  art  of  injudicious  reading,  the  art  of  miscel- 
laneous reading  which  every  normal  man  ought  to 
cultivate,  is  a  very  fine  and  satisfactory  art;  for 
the  best  guide  to  books  is  a  book  itself.  It  clasps 
hands  with  a  thousand  other  books.  It  has  al- 
ways seemed  to  me  that  "Sesame  and  Lilies" 
would  not  have  been  conceived  by  Ruskin  if  he 
had  not  heard  well  an  echo  of  "The  Following  of 
Christ."  There  was  a  time  when  the  lovers  of 
Ruskin  who  wanted  to  read  "The  Stones  of 
Venice"  and  the  rest  at  leisure,  felt  themselves 
obliged  to  form  clubs,  and  to  divide  the  expense, 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  73 

if  they  were  of  moderate  means,  in  order  to  get 
what  was  good  out  of  him.  But  somehow  or 
other,  probably  because  it  appealed  more  to  every- 
body, it  was  always  possible  to  find  a  copy  of  "Se- 
same and  Lilies"  at  an  old  book  stand.  I  think 
I  found  one  most  unexpectedly  at  Leary's  in 
Philadelphia,  where  I  also  discovered  the  copy  of 
Froissart.  The  Froissart,  as  I  have  said,  cost  me 
just  half  of  my  father's  Christmas  present  that 
year,  which  was  five  dollars.  I  must  have  man- 
aged to  get  the  Ruskin  volume  out  of  some  other 
fund,  for  I  had  many  things  to  buy  with  the  other 
two  and  one  half  dollars! 

Ruskin  is  left  alone  to-day;  he  does  not  seem  to 
fill  that  "long-felt  want"  which  we,  the  young  of 
the  sixties  and  seventies,  admitted.  No  doubt 
he  is  very  mannered  in  his  style,  mitred  and  coped 
when  he  might  have  been  very  simple  in  his  rai- 
ment. He  was  a  priest  in  literature  and  art;  and 
he  clothed  himself  as  a  priest.  He  marched  with 
a  stately  tread,  and  yet  he  stooped  to  the  single 
violets  by  the  wayside. 

By  the  way,  I  often  wished  when  I  was  reading 
Ruskin,  who  once  made  apple  blossoms  fashionable, 
that  he  had  led  a  crusade  against  the  double  and 


74    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

the  triple  violet,  which  have  destroyed  the  repu- 
tation of  the  real  violet.  What  can  be  more  re- 
pellent to  the  lovers  of  simplicity  than  a  bunch  of 
these  artificialities,  without  perfume,  tied  by  dark 
green  ribbon,  and  with  all  their  leaves  removed? 
"Sesame  and  Lilies"  had  the  effect  of  sending  me 
back  to  the  single  violet  whenever  I  was  inclined 
to  admire  the  camellia  japonica  or  any  other  thing 
that  was  artificial,  or  distorted  from  beauty  or 
simplicity. 

Circumstances  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  our 
affection  for  books.  Propinquity,  they  say,  leads 
very  frequently  to  marriage,  and  if  a  book  happens 
to  be  near  and  if  it  is  any  kind  of  book  at  all,  there 
is  a  great  temptation  to  develop  an  affection  for  it. 
All  I  can  say  is  that  I  think  that  "Sesame  and 
Lilies"  is  a  good  book,  for  after  all  a  book  must  be 
judged  by  its  effect.  It  led  me  further  into  Rus- 
kin,  and  helped  me  to  acquire  a  reverence  for  art 
and  to  estimate  the  relations  of  art  and  life.  One 
would  steel  oneself  against  the  fallacy  that  art, 
true  art,  might  exist  only  for  art's  sake,  when  one 
had  read  "Sesame  and  Lilies"  and  "The  Stones 
of  Venice."  Those  wise  men  who  make  literary 
"selections"   for   the   young  have   done   well   to 


MY  BOYHOOD  READING  75 

include  in  their  volumes  that  graphic  description, 
so  carefully  modulated  in  tone,  of  the  Cathedral  of 
St.  Mark.  Its  only  fault  is  that  it  comes  too  near 
to  being  prose  poetry;  and  discriminating  readers 
who  ponder  over  it  will  find  some  epithets  possible 
only  to  a  writer  who  was  an  artist  in  lines  and  pig- 
ments before  he  began  to  paint  with  the  pen. 

Ruskin  opened  our  eyes  rather  violently  to  some 
aspects  of  life  which  we,  the  young,  did  not  know; 
for  the  young  after  all  learn  very  little  by  intuition. 
They  must  be  taught  things.  This  is  perhaps  an 
excuse  for  those  vagaries  in  youth,  those  seemingly 
inexplicable  adventures  which  shock  the  old  who 
have  forgotten  what  it  is  to  be  young. 


CHAPTER  II 

Poets  and  Poetry 
France — Of  Maurice  de  Guerin 

In  1872,  the  attention  of  readers  was  forced  on 
a  few  great  names.  These  were  generally  the 
names  of  Frenchmen.  The  sympathy  of  Ameri- 
cans during  the  Franco-Prussian  War  had  been 
with  France,  and  during  the  latter  days  of  the 
French  Empire,  before  the  war,  Americans  had 
been  much  more  interested  in  France  than  in  any 
other  part  of  the  world.  There  were  letters  from 
Paris  in  the  newspapers.  The  Empress  Eugenie 
and  her  coterie  at  the  Tuileries,  the  Operas  of 
Offenbach,  and  the  gossip  about  literary  magnets 
of  the  time,  which  included  a  great  deal  of  Victor 
Hugo,  had  been  a  constant  subject  of  conversations. 

One  could  buy  French  books  easily  in  Phila- 
delphia; and  the  Mercantile  Library — now  dread- 
fully shorn  of  its  former  pretensions,  reduced  in 
size,  no  longer  so  comfortable,  so  delightfully  easy 

76 


POETS  AND  POETRY  77 

of  access  as  to  its  shelves — had  an  excellent  col- 
lection of  volumes  in  French. 

How  often  in  later  life  I  blessed  the  discrimi- 
nating collectors  of  that  library!  Nothing  worth 
while  at  that  time,  even  "L'Homme"  of  Ernest 
Hello,  seemed  to  have  been  left  out;  I  fear  that  I  was 
not  always  guided  by  the  critics  of  the  period.  I 
found  Amedee  Achard  as  interesting  as  Octave 
Feuillet;  George  Sand  bored  me;  I  could  never  get 
through  even  "La  Petite  Fadette,"  although  the 
critics  were  constantly  recommending  her  for  her 
"vitality."  I  found  Madame  de  Gerardin's  "La 
Femme  qui  Deteste  Son  Mari"  one  of  the  cleverest 
plays  I  had  yet  read.  I  have  not  seen  it  since;  but, 
outside  of  some  of  the  pieces  of  Augier,  it  seemed  to 
me  to  be  the  best  bit  of  construction  I  knew,  and 
the  human  interest  and  the  suspense  were  so  ad- 
mirably kept  up.  There  were  some  plays  by 
Octave  Feuillet — "Redemption"  was  one  and  "Le 
Roman  d'un  Jeune  Homme  Pauvre,"  which  di- 
vided my  admiration  with  the  management  of 
"Adrienne  Lecouvreur, "  by  Scribe,  and  "Made- 
moiselle de  la  Seigliere, "  by  Jules  Sandeau.  The 
French  playwrights  of  to-day  have  not  even  the 
technique  of  their  predecessors. 


78    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

At  this  time  I  was  very  royalist,  an  infuriated 
partisan  of  the  Comte  de  Chambord — Henry  V., 
as  a  few  of  us  preferred  to  call  him.  And  this  re- 
minds me  of  my  partisanship  in  things  English — if 
I  may  turn  for  the  moment  from  things  French — 
and  of  a  little  incident  not  without  humour.  I 
was  ardently  devoted  to  the  cause  of  the  Stuarts, 
and  was  for  a  time  attached  to  the  White  Rose  So- 
ciety, whose  correspondents  in  England  invariably 
sent  their  letters,  with  the  stamp  turned  upside 
down,  to  indicate  their  contempt  for  the  Guelf 
dynasty.  But  when,  at  a  small  and  frugal  re- 
union at  Mr.  Green's  restaurant  in  Philadelphia, 
our  host — he  was  an  American  Walsh  of  the  family 
of  de  Serrant — insisted  on  waving  his  glass  of  beer 
over  the  finger  bowls,  to  insinuate  that  we  were 
drinking  to  the  last  of  the  Stuarts  across  the  water 
— whoever  he  might  be — and  another  member  sug- 
gested that,  if  it  were  not  for  the  brutal  Hano- 
verians on  the  throne  of  England,  we,  in  the  British 
Colonies,  might  be  still  enjoying  the  blessedness  of 
being  ruled  by  a  descendant  of  Mary  Stuart,  I 
resigned!  I  was  still  devoutly  faithful  to  the  di- 
vine Mary  of  Scotland;  but  I  would  not  have  her 
mixed  up  in  American  politics! 


POETS  AND  POETRY  79 

Octave  Feuillet  satisfied  my  taste  for  elegance. 
Some  of  his  people  were  not  above  reproach — 
notice  the  lady  in  "Redemption,"  who  becomes 
suddenly  converted  to  a  belief  in  God  because  her 
twenty-fifth  lover  is  suddenly  restored  to  her.  I 
thought  that,  though  he  was  somewhat  corrupted 
by  the  influence  of  the  Tuileries,  he  was  socially 
so  admirably  correct. 

Everybody  at  this  time  talked  of  Renan.  This 
went  by  me  as  an  idle  dream,  for  I  could  never 
understand  why  anybody  should  take  a  man 
seriously  who  was  palpably  wrong.  To-day,  when 
Renan's  "Life  of  Jesus"  seems  almost  forgotten,  it 
is  strange  to  recall  the  fury  of  interest  it  excited  in 
the  seventies.  Louis  Veuillot  interested  me  much 
more  than  Renan,  whom  I  avoided  deliberately  be- 
cause I  understood  that  he  had  attacked  the 
Christian  religion.  Now,  Louis  Veuillot,  in  "Les 
Odeurs  de  Paris"  and  "Les  Parfums  de  Rome"  de- 
lighted me  almost  beyond  bounds.  I  did  often 
wonder  how  such  a  good  man  as  Louis  Veuillot 
could  have  acquired  such  un-Christian  use  of 
language.  When  he  announced  that  if  his  wife 
wrote  such  novels  as  George  Sand,  he  would  hesi- 
tate to  recognize  her  children,  it  seemed  to  me  that 


80    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

he  had  gone  too  far — still  it  was  a  pleasant  thing  to 
shock  the  chaste  Philadelphians  by  quoting  these 
trenchant  words  when  the  novels  of  the  lady  in 
question  were  mentioned  with  rapt  admiration. 

But  to  come  to  the  poets ! 

It  was,  I  think,  through  the  reading  of  the 
"Lundis"  of  Sainte-Beuve  that  I  discovered 
Maurice  de  Guerin.  He  almost  drove  my  beloved 
Keats  from  my  mind.  Somebody  warned  me 
against  Maurice  de  Guerin  on  the  ground  of  his 
pantheism.  I  had  been  warned  against  the  poems 
of  Emerson  on  account  of  their  paganism;  but  as 
I  had  been  brought  up  on  Virgil,  I  looked  on  pan- 
theism and  paganism  as  rather  orthodox  compared 
to  Renan's  negation  and  the  horrors  of  Calvinism. 
And,  after  all,  the  Catholic  Church  had  retained 
so  much  that  was  Jewish  and  pagan  that  I  was 
sure  to  find  myself  almost  as  much  at  home  among 
the  pagans  as  I  was  in  the  Old  Testament  at  times. 

Keats  and  Maurice  de  Guerin  will  be  always 
associated  in  my  mind.  I  discovered  them  about 
the  same  time.  I  had  been  solemnly  told  by  an 
eminent  Philadelphian  that  Wordsworth  was  the 
only  poet  worth  considering,  after  Shakespeare, 
and  that  Keats  had  no  intellectual  value  what- 


POETS  AND  POETRY  81 

ever.  But  I  was  not  looking  for  intellectual  value. 
I  mixed  up  the  intellect  with  a  kind  of  scientific 
jargon  about  protoplasm  and  natural  selection  and 
the  survival  of  the  fittest,  and  bathybius,  which 
was  then  all  the  fashion;  so  I  promptly  devoted 
myself  to  De  Guerin. 

I  had  already  found  great  pleasure  in  the 
"Journal"  of  his  sister  Eugenie.  The  "Journal" 
ought  never  to  be  allowed  to  go  out  of  fashion,  and 
probably  it  is  only  out  of  fashion  in  those  circles 
which  Mr.  Mencken  so  scorns,  that  devote  them- 
selves to  imitations  of  Marie  Bashkirtseff  or  Sarah 
McLean.  I  had  begun  to  enjoy  the  flavour  of  the 
calm  life  of  Eugenie  at  La  Cayla  when  I  found  it 
necessary,  in  order  to  understand  the  allusions, 
to  plunge  again  into  the  journals,  letters,  and 
poems  of  Maurice  de  Guerin.  Thus  it  happened 
that  I  had  fallen  upon  "Le  Centaure"  first.  It 
is  very  short,  as  everybody  knows.  It  was  to  ma 
the  most  appealing  poem  I  had  ever  read. 

Keats's  Greece  seems  somehow  to  be  a  Greece 
too  full  of  modern  colour,  too  unclassical.  This 
was  a  mistake,  of  course,  due  to  the  fact  that  all 
my  Greek  reading  had  been  filtered  through  pro- 
fessors and  textbooks;  and  all  my  Greek  seeing  had 


82    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

been  centred  on  pale  white  statues.  It  did  not 
occur  to  me  then — at  least  I  did  not  know  it — 
that  the  great  Greek  statues  were  not  colourless, 
and  that  at  Delphi  there  were  statues  that 
glowed  with  the  hues  of  life.  Strange  to  say, 
though  "Le  Centaure"  seemed  to  me  to  be  Greek 
in  the  classical  sense,  yet  it  palpitated  with  human 
emotion.  Who  that  has  read  it  can  forget  the 
simplicity  of  the  opening?    Says  the  Centaur: 

I  received  my  birth  in  the  fastnesses  of  these  mountains 
As  the  stream  of  this  valley  of  which  the  primitive  drops  run 
from  the  rocks  which  weep  in  a  deep  grotto,  the  first  moment  of 
my  life  fell  among  the  darkness  of  a  secluded  place  in  which 
the  silence  was  not  troubled.  When  our  mothers  come 
near  the  time  of  their  deliverance,  they  flee  towards  the 
caverns,  and  in  the  depth  of  the  most  remote,  in  the  darkest 
of  shadows,  their  children  are  born  without  a  moan  and  the 
fruits  of  their  womb  are  as  silent  as  themselves.  Their  strong 
milk  enables  us  to  overcome  without  weakness  or  a  doubt- 
ful struggle  the  first  difficulties  of  life;  however,  we  go  out 
from  our  caves  later  than  you  from  your  cradles.  It  is 
understood  among  us  that  we  must  hide  and  envelope  the 
first  moments  of  existence  as  days  filled  by  the  gods.  My 
growth  followed  its  course  almost  among  the  shadows  where 
I  was  born.  The  depth  of  my  living  place  was  so  lost  in 
the  shadow  of  the  mountain  that  I  would  not  have  known 
where  the  opening  was  if  rushing  sometimes  into  this  open- 
ing the  winds  had  not  passed  about  me  certain  movements 
suddenly    and    refreshing    breezes.     Sometimes,    too,    my 


POETS  AND  POETRY  83 

mother  came  back  carrying  the  perfume  of  the  valleys,  or 
dripping  with  the  waves  of  the  water  she  frequented.  Now 
these  returns  of  hers  gave  me  no  knowledge  of  the  valleys  or 
the  stream,  but  their  suggestions  disquieted  my  spirit,  and  I 
paced  agitatedly  in  my  shades. 


After  all,  it  requires  leisure  to  enjoy  fully  the 
writings  of  Eugenie  de  Guerin  and  her  brother — I 
inevitably  think  of  this  brother  and  sister  together. 
There  always  lingers  about  the  genius  of  these  two 
delicate  and  sensitive  beings  a  certain  perfume  of 
the  white  lilac  which  Maurice  loved.  It  happened 
that  through  the  amiability  of  my  father,  when  I 
read  the  Journals  of  the  De  Guerins,  I  had  leisure. 
A  period  of  ill  health  stopped  my  work — I  had 
begun  to  study  law — and  there  were  long  days 
that  could  easily  be  filled  by  strolls  in  Fairmount 
Park  in  the  early  spring  days,  when  it  seems  most 
appropriate  to  associate  one's  self  with  these  two 
who  ought  to  be  read  in  the  mood  of  the  early 
spring,  and  they  ought  to  be  read  slowly  and  even 
prayerfully.  I  hope  I  may  be  pardoned  for  quot- 
ing a  sonnet  which  had  a  great  vogue  in  the  late 
'seventies  showing  the  impression  that  Maurice 
de  Guerin  made.  It  was  a  great  surprise  to  find 
part  of  the  sestette  copied  in  the  "Prose  Writings" 


84    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

of  Walt  Whitman,  who  very  rarely  quoted  any 
verse. 

The  old  wine  filled  him,  and  he  saw,  with  eyes 

Anoint  of  Nature,  fauns  and  dryads  fair 

Unseen  by  others;  to  him  maidenhair 

And  waxen  lilacs,  and  those  birds  that  rise 

A-sudden  from  tall  reeds  at  slight  surprise, 

Brought  charmed  thoughts;  and  in  earth  everywhere 

He,  like  sad  Jacques,  found  a  music  rare 

As  that  of  Syrinx  to  old  Grecians  wise. 

A  pagan  heart,  a  Christian  soul  had  he: 

He  followed  Christ,  yet  for  dead  Pan  he  sighed, 

Till  earth  and  heaven  met  within  his  breast; 

As  if  Theocritus  in  Sicily 

Had  come  upon  the  Figure  crucified 

And  lost  his  gods  in  deep,  Christ  given  rest. 

I  found,  too,  satisfaction  of  the  taste  which 
Hamerton  had  corroborated,  in  Eugenie  de  Gue- 
rin's  little  sketches  of  outdoor  scenery — sketches 
which  always  have  a  human  interest.  I  had  not 
yet  begun  to  take  any  pleasure  in  Wordsworth; 
and,  in  fact,  all  the  poets  who  seemed  to  be  able  to 
enjoy  nature  for  itself — nature  unrelieved  or  un- 
improved by  human  figures — had  no  attractions  for 
me.  And  here  the  dear  Edward  Roth  came  in,  and 
confirmed  my  taste.  And  there  were  heavy  argu- 
ments with    other  clever   Philadelphians,  Doctor 


POETS  AND  POETRY  85 

Nolan,  the  scientist  who  loved  letters,  and  that 
amateur  of  literature,  Charles  Devenny. 

As  for  Pope  and  his  school,  they  seemed  to 
represent  an  aspect  of  the  world  as  unreal  as  the 
world  of  Watteau,  and  with  much  less  excuse;  but 
pictures  of  the  kind  I  found  in  the  "Journal"  of 
Eugenie  de  Guerin  had  a  living  charm.  At  this 
time,  I  had  not  seen  Matthew  Arnold's  paper  on 
Maurice  de  Guerin,  and  I  did  not  know  that  any 
appreciation  of  his  sister  had  been  written  in  Eng- 
lish. I  had  seen  a  paragraph  or  two  written  by 
some  third-rate  person  who  objected  to  her  piety 
as  sentimental,  and  incomprehensible  to  the  "An- 
glo-Saxon" world!  That  her  piety  should  be 
sentimental,  if  Eugenie's  sentiment  can  be  char- 
acterized by  that  term,  seemed  to  me  to  be  ques- 
tionable ;  and  it  was  evident  that  any  one  who  read 
French  literature  at  all  must  be  aware  that  there 
were  hundreds  of  beautiful  sentiments  and  phrases 
which  the  average  "Anglo-Saxon"  world  found  it 
impossible  to  comprehend. 

The  beloved  home  of  Eugenie,  La  Cayla,  was  not 
a  gay  place.  It  was  even  more  circumscribed  than 
Miss  Mitford's  "Village";  but  Eugenie,  being  less 
"Anglo-Saxon"    than    Miss    Mitford,    had    more 


86    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

sentiment  and  a  more  sensitive  perception  of  the 
meaning  of  nature — though,  when  it  comes  to 
sentimentalism,  the  English  man  or  woman,  who 
often  masquerades  under  the  shelter  of  "Anglo- 
Saxonism, "  is  as  sentimental  as  the  most  senti- 
mental of  sentimentalists.  This  is  what  I  mean 
by  the  landscape  charm  of  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  and 
yet  the  picture  in  this  case  is  not  a  landscape,  but 
the  interior  of  a  room : 

I  was  admiring  just  now  a  little  landscape,  presented  by 
my  room,  as  it  was  being  illuminated  with  the  rising  sun. 
How  pretty  it  was!  Never  did  I  see  a  more  beautiful  effect 
of  light  on  the  paper,  thrown  through  painted  trees.  It  was 
diaphanous,  transparent.  It  was  almost  wasted  on  my 
eyes;  it  ought  to  have  been  seen  by  a  painter.  And  yet 
does  not  God  create  the  beautiful  for  everybody?  All  our 
birds  were  singing  this  morning  while  I  was  at  my  prayers. 
This  accompaniment  pleases  me,  though  it  distracts  me  a 
little.  I  stop  to  listen;  then  I  begin  again,  thinking  that  the 
birds  and  I  are  alike  singing  a  hymn  to  God,  and  that,  per- 
haps, those  little  creatures  sing  better  than  I.  But  the 
charm  of  prayer,  the  charm  of  communion  with  God,  they 
cannot  enjoy  that;  one  must  have  a  soul  to  feel  it.  This 
happiness  that  the  birds  have  not  is  mine.  It  is  sorrow. 
How  little  time  is  needed  for  that.  The  joy  comes  from  the 
sun,  the  mild  air,  the  song  of  birds,  all  delights  to  me;  as 
well  as  from  a  letter  of  Mimi's  (who  is  now  at  Gaillac),  in 
which  she  tells  me  of  Madame  Vialar,  who  has  seen  thee,  and 
of  other  cheerful  things. 


POETS  AND  POETRY  87 

And  again : 

However,  I  had  a  delightful  waking  this  morning.  As 
I  was  opening  my  eyes  a  lovely  moon  faced  my  window, 
and  shone  into  my  bed,  so  brightly  that  at  first  I  thought 
it  was  a  lamp  suspended  to  my  shutter.  It  was  very  sweet 
and  pretty  to  look  at  this  white  light,  and  so  I  contemplated, 
admired,  watched  it  till  it  hid  itself  behind  the  shutter  to 
peep  out  again,  and  then  conceal  itself  like  a  child  playing  at 
hide-and-seek. 

Emerson  tried  to  teach  us  that  there  can  be  in- 
finite beauties  in  a  little  space — untold  joys  within 
a  day — and  he  asks  us  to  take  short  outlooks. 
Saint  Teresa  and  Saint  Francis  de  Sales  were  before 
him  in  this;  but  Eugenie  de  Guerin  exemplifies  its 
value  much  more  than  any  other  modern  writer. 
Her  soul  was  often  sad,  but  it  never  ceased  to  find 
joy  in  the  little  happinesses  of  life.  In  our  coun- 
try, we  are  losing  this  faculty  which  the  best  of 
the  later  New  Englanders  tried  to  recover.  It 
is  a  pity  because  it  deprives  us  of  the  real  joie  de 
vivre  which  is  not  dependent  on  ecstasies  of  rest- 
less emotions  or  violent  amusements. 

The  devotion  of  Eugenie  de  Guerin  to  her  brother 
resembles  that  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  for  her 
daughter,  the  peerless  Pauline.  It  was  George  Sand 
who  discovered  the  genius  of  that  brother,  though 


88    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

her  characterization  of  the  qualities  of  his  genius 
did  not  please  the  Christian  soul  of  his  sister.  It 
was  left  to  Sainte-Beuve  to  fix  De  Guerin's  place 
in  French  literature;  and  I  recall  now  that  the 
reading  of  Sainte-Beuve  led  me  to  find  the  poems 
of  David  Gray,  now  probably  forgotten,  and  to  go 
back  to  Keats. 

After  Maurice  de  Guerin's  "Le  Centaure"  I 
found  Keats  even  less  Greek  than  I  thought  he 
was,  because  he  was  less  philosophical  than  De 
Guerin,  and  because  he  did  not  concern  himself 
with  the  gravest  questions  of  life;  but,  after  all, 
Keats  is  the  poet  for  the  poets! 

My  dear  friend,  Edward  Roth — whom  James 
Huneker  celebrates  in  his  "Steeplejack" — named 
Spenser  as  "the  poet  of  the  poets";  but  Spenser 
is  too  hard  to  read — even  harder  than  Chaucer, 
and  certainly  more  involved,  while  no  poets  that 
ever  lived  can  make  pictures  so  glowing,  so  full 
of  a  sensitive  and  exquisite  light  as  Keats.  Later, 
it  seemed  absurd  for  the  French  poets  of  a  cer- 
tain genre  to  call  themselves  symbolists.  When 
Keats  wrote,  he  saw  and  felt,  and  he  saw  because 
he  felt.  It  was  not  necessary  for  him  to  search 
laboriously  for  the  colour  of  a  word.     The  thing 


POETS  AND  POETRY  89 

itself  coloured  the  word — and  Keats,  working  hard 
in  a  verbal  laboratory,  would  have  been  an  anom- 
aly. It  was  not  necessary  for  him  to  study  care- 
fully the  music  of  his  verse  as  Campion  did  or 
Coventry  Patmore  or  as  Sidney  Lanier  is  sup- 
posed to  have  done — though  one  cannot  have  sus- 
pected that  Sidney  Lanier's  elaborate  laboratory 
was  erected  after  his  best  verse  had  been  written. 

Maurice  de  Guerin,  a  very  Christian  soul,  was 
probably  disturbed  in  his  religious  sentiments  by 
the  defection  of  his  old  friend  and  director,  Pere 
de  Lamennais — the  "M.  Feli"  of  the  little  para- 
dise of  la  Chenie.  To  the  delight  of  some  of  the 
more  independent  and  emancipated  of  the  literary 
circle  at  Paris,  which  included  George  Sand,  Mau- 
rice was  becoming  more  pantheistic  than  Christian. 
He  seemed  to  have  tried  to  make  for  humanity  an 
altar  on  which  Christ  and  Nature  might  be  almost 
equally  adored,  and  this  gave  Eugenie  great  pain, 
although  it  did  not  change  her  love  or  make  a  rift 
in  her  belief  in  him. 

De  Guerin  is  a  singing  poet  in  a  language  which 
is  used  by  few  singing  poets  for  serious  themes. 
There  are  few  lyric  poems  in  French,  like  the 
"Chanson  de  Fortunio"  of  Alfred  de  Musset.     It 


90    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

was  not  strange  that  the  great  Sainte-Beuve  found 
the  verse  of  De  Guerin  somewhat  too  unusual. 
Sainte-Beuve  calls  it  "the  familiar  Alexandrine 
reduced  to  a  conversational  tone,  and  taking  all 
the  little  turns  of  an  intimate  talk."  Eugenie 
complains  that  "it  sings  too  much  and  does  not 
talk  enough."  However,  one  of  the  most  charm- 
ing of  literary  essays,  to  which  Matthew  Arnold's 
seems  almost  "common,"  is  that  preceding  Tre- 
butien's  "Journals,  Letters,  and  Poems  of  Maurice 
de  Guerin."  It  would  be  folly  for  me  to  try  to 
permeate  the  mind  of  any  other  person  with  the 
atmosphere  which  still  palpitates  in  me  when  I 
think  of  the  first  delight  of  reading  at  leisure  the 
poems  of  Maurice  and  the  letters  of  Eugenie.  I 
might  just  as  well  attempt  to  make  a  young  man  of 
our  time  feel  the  thrill  that  came  when  we  were 
young  and  first  heard  the  most  beautiful  of  all 
love  songs — "Come  into  the  Garden,  Maud!" 

One  can  hear  the  amazed  laughter,  the  superior 
giggles  that  would  arise  from  a  group  of  Green- 
wich Villagers  if  they  did  me  the  honour  to  read 
this  page;  but  the  real  Quartier  Latin  has  better 
taste  and  is  not  so  imitative — and  paraphrases  of 
this  lovely  lyric  still  find  admirers  in  the  gardens  of 


POETS  AND  POETRY  91 

the  Luxembourg  and  on  the  heights  of  Mont- 
inartre.  Tennyson,  like  De  Guerin,  had  bent  the 
old  classic  form  to  newer  usage,  and  one  can  hardly 
help  seeing,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  admirers 
of  Swinburne  claim  this  laurel  for  him,  that 
Tennyson  discovered  the  secret  of  making  lyrical 
verse  musical  while  discarding  rime.  Both  Mau- 
rice de  Guerin  and  Tennyson,  who  have  super- 
ficial characteristics  in  common,  send  us  back  to 
Theocritus,  the  most  human,  the  most  lyrical, 
the  most  unaffectedly  pagan  of  all  the  poets  who 
wrote  before  Pan  said  his  despairing  good-bye  to 
all  the  Grecian  Isles.  But  what  a  mixture  is  this ! 
— Maurice  and  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  Keats,  Madame 
de  Sevigne,  Theocritus,  and  Tennyson,  the  Eliza- 
bethan Campion — and  yet  they  are  all  related. 

In  fact,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  have  never  read 
any  good  book  that  was  not  related  intimately  to 
at  least  a  score  of  other  books.  It  is  true  that  in 
a  measure  a  book  gives  to  us  what  we  take  to  it; 
and  we  can  only  take  much  out  of  it  when  we  ap- 
proach the  group  of  ministering  authors  who  alone 
make  life  both  cheerful  and  endurable. 

The  received  methods  of  "teaching"  the  clas- 
sics  in   what   people  call    "the   dead    languages" 


92    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

nearly  always  weaken  the  faculties  of  the  soul, 
while  they  may  develop  certain  hidden  abilities  of 
the  mind.  This  favourite  process  of  pedagogues 
very  often  defeats  itself.  Mr.  Edward  Roth 
honestly  believed  that  the  Roman  Empire  had 
risen,  declined,  and  fallen  in  order  that  the  Latin 
language  might  live!  The  logical  result  of  this 
teaching  on  the  eager  young  mind,  at  once  logical, 
ductile,  and  obstinate,  was  to  induce  it  to  discover 
something  about  the  Roman  Empire,  in  order  that 
it  might  cease  to  yawn  over  the  declensions,  and 
to  be  bored  by  prosody ;  to  discover  why  the  glori- 
ous Empire  had  lived  and  died  in  order  to  pro- 
duce an  elaborate  mound  of  charred  bones!  Mr. 
Roth  himself,  though  a  classicist  of  the  classicists, 
managed  to  make  the  Romans  interesting  in 
conversation;  he  always  impressed  one  that  the 
Roman  baths,  or  the  chariot  races,  or  the  banquets, 
which  he  admitted  were  full  of  colour  and  life, 
were  by  comparison  faded  and  pale  in  the  glow  and 
aroma  of  the  sentences  invented  by  the  Latins  to 
describe  them! 

The  impossibility  of  getting  anything  out  of  the 
study  of  Greek  by  hard  work,  sent  me,  after  I  had 
read   Maurice  de  Guerin's   "Centaure,"   to  read 


POETS  AND  POETRY  93 

joyously  an  edition  of  the  "Idyls  of  Theocritus"  in 
French.  While  browsing  I  found  on  the  shelves 
of  the  Mercantile  Library  the  novels  of  Tourgueneff 
in  the  same  language.  This  delayed  me  a  little. 
I  found  Theocritus  and  Bion  and  Moschus  in  the 
Bohn  Edition,  which  I  think  has  now  become 
the  beneficent  "Everyman's  Library."  I  revelled! 
The  Mimes  of  Herondas  had  not  yet  been  dis- 
covered, but  some  of  the  dialogues  in  these  poems 
contained  all  the  best  of  their  essences.  My  friends 
among  the  hard  workers  at  the  "Classics"  scorned 
me.  The  elderly  gentleman  from  Oxford  who 
gave  us  lessons  three  or  four  times  a  week  and 
held  that,  when  we  were  able  to  translate  at  sight 
a  certain  page  of  Greek  which  he  had  composed 
himself  from  various  great  authors,  that  we  were 
perfect,  treated  me  as  a  pariah;  but  that  made  no 
difference.  I  continued,  in  merciful  leisure,  to 
saturate  myself  in  the  golden  glow  of  the  Sicilian 
poets.  I  tried  hard  to  express  my  devotion  to 
Theocritus  by  paraphrases,  very  slightly  from  the 
original  Greek,  mostly  from  the  French,  and  partly 
from  the  Bohn  Edition.  I  quote  a  result  which  Mr. 
Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  said  was  too  para- 
phrastic.    It  is  from  the  "Cyclops": 


94    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Softer  than  lambs  and  whiter  than  the  curds, 

0  Galatea,  swan-nymph  of  the  sea! 

Vain  is  my  longing,  worthless  are  my  words; 
Why  do  you  come  in  night's  sweet  dreams  to  me, 
And  when  I  wake,  swift  leave  me,  as  in  fear 
The  lambkin  hastens  when  a  wolf  is  near? 

Why  did  my  mother  on  a  dark-bright  day 
Bring  you,  for  hyacinths,  a-near  my  cave? 

1  was  the  guide,  and  through  the  tangled  way 
I  thoughtless  led  you ;  I  am  now  your  slave. 

Peace  left  my  soul  when  you  knocked  at  my  heart — 
Come,  Galatea,  never  to  depart ! 

Though  I  am  dark  and  ugly  to  the  sight — 

A  Cyclops  I,  and  stronger  there  are  few — 

Of  you  I  dream  through  all  the  quick-paced  night, 

And  in  the  morn  ten  fawns  I  feed  for  you, 

And  four  young  bears :  O  rise  from  grots  below, 

Soft  love  and  peace  with  me  forever  know! 

Last  night  I  dreamed  that  I,  a  monster  gilled, 
Swam  in  the  sea  and  saw  you  singing  there : 
I  gave  you  lilies  and  your  grotto  rilled 
With  the  sweet  odours  of  all  flowers  rare; 
I  gave  you  apples,  as  I  kissed  your  hand, 
And  reddest  poppies  from  my  richest  land. 

Oh,  brave  the  restless  billows  of  your  world: 
They  toss  and  tremble;  see  my  cypress-grove, 
And  bending  laurels,  and  the  tendrils  curled 
Of  honeyed  grapes,  and  a  fresh  treasure-trove 
In  vine-crowned  ^Etna,  of  pure-running  rills ! 
O  Galatea,  kill  the  scorn  that  kills! 


POETS  AND  POETRY  95 

Softer  than  lambs  and  whiter  than  the  curds, 

O  Galatea,  listen  to  my  prayer: 

Come,  come  to  land,  and  hear  the  song  of  birds; 

Rise,  rise,  from  ocean-depths,  as  lily-fair 

As  you  are  in  my  dreams !     Come,  then,  O  Sleep, 

For  you  alone  can  bring  her  from  the  deep. 

And  Galatea,  in  her  cool,  green  waves, 

Plaits  her  long  hair  with  purple  flower-bells, 

And  laughs  and  sings,  while  black-browed  Cyclops  raves 

And  to  the  wind  his  love-lorn  story  tells : 

For  well  she  knows  that  Cyclops  will  ere  long 

Forget,  as  poets  do,  his  pain  in  song. 


No  sensitive  mind,  can  dwell  on  Theocritus, 
even  when  interpreted  in  English  prose,  without 
feeling  something  of  the  joy  of  the  old  Syracusan 
in  life.  His  human  nature  is  of  the  kind  that 
makes  the  nymphs  and  swains  of  Alexander  Pope 
dull  and  artificial.  There  are  flies  in  this  delicious 
ointment,  one  must  admit,  touches  of  corruption 
which  a  degenerate  paganism  condoned  and  pal- 
liated, but  we  must  remember,  as  an  extenuation 
of  the  Greek  attitude,  that  the  oracle  of  Delphi 
protested  against  them.  The  Cyprus  plains  of 
Theocritus  yet  echo  with  the  call  of  the  cicada, 
and  the  anemones  still  bloom.  The  pipes  of 
Pan  are  not  all  silent.     The  world  would  lose  some 


96    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

of  its  beauty  if  Theocritus  and  the  Sicilian  poets 
did  not  entice  us  to  hear  their  echoes. 

But  to  how  many  links  of  a  long  chain  does 
Maurice  de  Guerin  lead  us!  Here  is  another  link 
— Jose  de  Heredia,  and  his  jewelled  and  chiselled 
sonnets — the  "Antique  Medal"  with  its  peerless 
sestette,  which  combines  the  essential  meanings  of 
Keats's  "Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn." 

Le   temps   passe.     Tout   meurt.     Le   marbre   meme   s'use. 
Argrigente  n'est  plus  gxiune  ombre,  et  Syracuse 
Dort  sous  le  bleu  linceul  de  son  del  indulgent; 

Et  seul  le  dur  mStal  que  V amour  fit  docile 
Garde  encore  en  sa  fleur,  aux  mSdailles  d 'argent, 
U immortelle  beaute  des  vierges  de  Sicile." 

A  translation  of  which  reads : 

Time  goes;  all  dies;  marble  itself  decays; 

A  shadow  Agrigentum;  Syracuse 

Sleeps,  still  in  death,  beneath  her  kind  sky's  shades; 

But  the  hard  metal  guards  through  all  the  days, 

Silver  grown  docile  unto  love's  own  use, 

The  immortal  beauty  of  Sicilian  maids. 

I  always  felt  that  Dante  would  have  been  less 
devoted  to  Virgil  had  he  known  Theocritus.  The 
artificial  Roman  seems  faded  when  one  compares 
his  rural  elegies  with  the  lovely  pictures  of  the 
first  of  all  the  Syracusan  poets.     Horatius  Flaccus 


POETS  AND  POETRY  97 

had  more  of  the  quality  of  Theocritus  than  of 
Virgil;  and  though  Virgil  might  have  been  a  good 
guide  for  Dante  in  his  sublime  wanderings,  he  was 
a  guide  of  the  intellect  rather  than  of  the  heart. 
It  requires  some  courage,  perhaps,  to  confess  that 
one  reads  Theocritus  in  English  rather  than  in 
Greek.  The  French  rendering  is  too  paraphrastic; 
but,  although  my  classical  friends,  or  rather  my 
friends  enrage  of  the  "Classics,"  honestly  despise 
me  for  making  this  confession,  I  shamelessly  en- 
joy Theocritus  in  the  Bohn  Edition,  without  even 
using  it  as  a  "crib"  to  the  forgotten  Greek  text 
rather  than  begin  a  course  of  Grecian  philology 
and  to  lose  the  perfume  of  the  crushed  thyme  or 
the  sight  of  the  competing  shepherds  on  the  shrub- 
dotted  prairie. 

Dante 

A  constant  reader  is  one  who  always  returns  to 
his  first  loves.  He  may  find  them  changed  because 
he  has  changed;  but  the  soul  of  that  reader  is  dead 
who  never  goes  back  to  "Ivanhoe"  to  renew  the 
thrill  of  the  famous  tournament  or  to  discover 
whether  Leather  Stocking  is  the  superman  he 
once  seemed  to   be.     I   find   myself,   in  old  age, 


98    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

divided  between  two  conflicting  opinions.  "There 
is  no  leisure  in  this  country,"  I  am  told.  "A  great 
change  has  taken  place.  The  motor  car  has  de- 
stroyed the  art  of  reading,  and,  as  for  the  good  old 
books — nobody  reads  them  any  more."  On  the 
other  hand,  I  hear,  "People  do  read,  but  they 
read  only  frivolous  books  which  follow  one  another 
like  the  hot-cakes  made  at  noon  in  the  windows  of 
Mr.  Child's  restaurants." 

Personally,  I  cannot  accept  either  opinion.  In 
the  first  place,  the  winter  is  the  time  for  reading — 
I  recall  Robert  Underwood  Johnson's  "Winter 
Hour"  when  I  think  of  this — and  the  motor  car, 
especially  in  country  places,  does  not  fimction 
violently  in  the  winter  time.  Many  journeys 
from  Boston,  through  New  England,  to  the 
Middle  West  have  taught  me  that  folk  are  reading 
and  discussing  books  more  than  ever.  Whatever 
may  be  said  of  the  mass  of  American  people,  who 
are  probably  learning  slowly  what  national  culture 
means,  there  are  at  the  top  of  this  mass  thousands 
of  Americans  who  love  good  books,  who  possess 
good  books,  and  who  return  each  year  to  the  loves 
of  their  youth. 

The  celebration  of  the  sixth  centenary  of  the 


POETS  AND  POETRY  99 

death  of  Dante  Alighieri  proves  this.  It  is  true 
enough  that  Dante  and  Goethe  and  Milton  are  more 
talked  about  in  English-speaking  countries  than 
read,  and  when  the  enthusiasm  awakened  in  honour 
of  the  great  Florentine  reached  its  height,  there  were 
found  many  people  in  our  country  who  were  quite 
capable  of  asking  why  Dante  should  be  read. 

Looking  back  I  found  it  easy  to  answer  this 
question  myself,  for,  perhaps,  beginning  with  a 
little  gentle  aversion  to  the  English  rimed  trans- 
lations of  the  "Divine  Comedy,"  my  love  for 
Dante  has  been  a  slow  growth.  The  Dante 
specialists  discourage  us  with  their  learning.  There 
are  few  who,  like  Mr.  Plimpton,  can  lucidly  ex- 
pose the  foundations  of  the  educations  of  Dante 
to  us  without  frightening  us  by  the  sight  of  a  wall 
of  impregnable  erudition.  Naturally,  one  cannot 
approach  Dante  in  order  to  begin  an  education 
in  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  Renascence  which 
one  never  began  in  one's  own  time;  but  to  be  con- 
soled by  Dante  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  erudite. 
In  fact,  to  the  mind  bent  on  spiritual  enlighten- 
ment, the  notes  of  the  erudite,  above  all,  the  con- 
jectures of  the  erudite,  are  frequently  wrong. 
Even  Israel  Gollancz,  in  his  three  valuable  volumes 


100  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

in  the  Temple  Edition,  nods  over  his  notes  occa- 
sionally. And  by  the  way,  for  all  amateurs  in  the 
reading  of  the  "Divine  Comedy"  nothing  can  be 
better  than  this  Temple  Edition,  which  contains  the 
Italian  on  one  page  and  a  lucid  prose  translation  into 
English  on  the  next.  As  I  grew  older  I  grew  more 
and  more  enamoured  of  Longfellow's  Dantean  Son- 
nets, but  not  of  his  translation,  for  all  rime  trans- 
lations must  be  one  half,  at  least,  the  author  and 
the  other  half  the  translator.  Gollancz  is  best  for 
anybody  who  does  not  enjoy  poetic  tours  de  force. 

In  his  note  on  the  most  popular  lines  in  the 
"Divine  Comedy," 

Nessun  maggior  dolors, 
che  ricordarsi  del  tempo  felice 
nella  miseria; 

Gollancz  says: 

Although  these  words  are  translated  literally  from  Boe- 
thius,  and  although  we  know  that  Dante  had  made  a  special 
study  of  Boethius,  yet  we  cannot  well  identify  the  dottore 
with  this  philosopher:  for  how  can  we  be  expected  to  assume 
that  Francesca  was  acquainted  with  these  two  facts?  The 
reference  is  probably  to  Virgil,  and  to  his  position  in  Limbo. 

Into  this  Limbo  Christ  descended  fifty-two 
years  after  Virgil's  death  and  drew  certain  souls 


POETS  AND  POETRY  101 

up  with  him  to  Heaven.  We  are,  however,  by  no 
means  certain  that  Virgil  was  happier  on  earth 
than  he  was  "upon  the  green  enamel"  {verde 
smalto)  in  this  place  of  quiet  leisure  which  was 
the  vestibule  to  Hell,  but  not  Hell  itself,  and  which, 
to  some  chosen  souls,  had  already  been  a  vestibule 
to  the  Palace  of  the  Beatific  Vision.  If  Dante 
had  been  translated  in  the  old  days  of  rigid  Cal- 
vinism in  Scotland  and  New  England,  his  toler- 
ance of  the  pagans  who  found  parts  of  Hell  not 
entirely  uncomfortable  would  have  caused  him 
to  be  looked  on  as  a  corruptor  of  the  faith.  But 
what  would  they  have  said  to  the  "Paradiso" 
which  I  have  always  found  more  full  of  consolation 
than  any  sermon  that  was  ever  preached?  Let  us 
take  the  description  of  the  Church  Triumphant  in 
Canto  XXXII.  How  sweetly  Dante  disposes  of 
the  heresy  that  all  children  unbaptized  by  material 
water  are  doomed: 

Dunque,  senza  merce  di  lor  costume, 
locati  son  per  gradi  differenti, 
sol  differendo  nel  primiero  aeume. 

Bastava  si  nei  secoli  recent  i 
con  Vinnocenza,  per  aver  salute, 
solamente  la  fede  del  parenti; 


102  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

poiche  le  prime  etadi  fur  compiute, 

convenne  ai  maschi  alV  innocenti  penne, 
per  circoncidere,  acquistar  virtute. 

Ma  poichee  il  tempo  della  grazia  venne, 
senza  battesmo  perfetto  di  Cristo, 
tale  innocenza  laggiu  si  ritenne. 

And  then  remembering  the  innocence  of  the 
little  children  Dante  turns  to  that  face  "which  is 
most  likest  unto  Christ's"  the  face  of  Mary  the 
Mother,  who  is  the  protectress  and  friend  of  all 
children.  If  the  strict  Calvinists  had  known  the 
"Paradiso"  of  Dante  as  well  as  they  knew  their 
Old  Testament,  their  theology  might  have  found 
more  adherence  among  the  merciful,  for  the  "Para- 
diso" is  a  triumphant  song  of  mercy,  of  love,  and 
of  the  final  triumph  of  every  soul  that  has  sin- 
cerely hoped  in,  or  sought,  the  truth,  even  if  the 
truth  were  not  crowned  in  its  fullness  in  this  world. 

And  Dante,  put  by  Raphael  without  protest 
from  the  Church  Militant,  among  the  Doctors 
of  the  Faith,  glorifies  Trajan  among  the  Saved  and 
opens  Heaven  to  Cato.  This  shows,  by  the  way, 
the  falsity  of  the  Voltairean  mauvais  mot,  that  all 
the  people  worth  meeting  are  in  Hell !  And  Dante 
sees  Constantine  in  Heaven,  although  he  thinks 


POETS  AND  POETRY  103 

that  this  Emperor's  donation  of  territory  was  an 
evil  gift.     Dante,  who,  by  the  way,  was  nearer  to 
the  old  records  and  this  tradition  of  the  older  time, 
is  a  witness  against  Lord   Bryce's  assertion   that 
the    documents    of    Constantine's    donation    were 
mediaeval    forgeries.     Dante     believed,     however, 
that  the  donation  was  invalid,  because   the   suc- 
cessor of  St.  Peter,  being  of  the  spirit,  could  not 
accept  temporal    power.     This   he  asserts   in  his 
"De  Monarchia,"  which  was  for  a  time  on  the 
"Index."     Times  have   changed,  and   "De  Mon- 
archia"   and    Milton's    "Paradise   Lost"    are   no 
longer  in  the  "Index,"  though  Balzac  and  Dumas, 
in  French,  are.     But  many  of  the  Faithful  in  the 
United  States  console  themselves  by  assuming  that, 
as  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Zahm's  "Religion  and  Sci- 
ence," this  the  method  of  the  Sacred  Congregation 
is  not  without  its  distinctions.     Dr.  Zahm's  book, 
suppressed   in   Italian,   received  the  proper  "im- 
primatur" in  English!     So  may  "The  Three  Mus- 
keteers" and  may  "Monte  Cristo"  be  regarded  as 
coming  under  the  ban  in  the  original,  but  as  tol- 
erated in  the  translation? 

Dante's  bitterness  against  certain  Popes  made 
no  rift  in  his  creed,  nor  does  it  seem  to  have  made 


104  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

him  less  respected  by  the  Roman  Court.  There 
is  in  the  "Paradiso"  that  great  passage  on  the 
poet's  faith — 

Cosl  spirb  di  quelV  amore  acceso; 

indi  soggiunse:  "Assai  bene  e  trascorsa 

d'esta  moneta  gia  la  lega  e  it  peso; 
ma  dimmi  se  tn  V  hai  nella  tua  borsa." 

ed'  io:  "Si,  Vho,  si  lucida  e  si  tonda, 

che  nel  suo  conio  nulla  mi  s'  inforsa." 

Appresso  usci  della  luce  profonda, 

che  li  splendeva;  "  Questa  cara  gioia, 

sopra  la  quale  ogni  virtu,  si  fonda, 
onde  ti  venne?"  Ed  io:  "La  larga  ploia 

dello  Spirito  Santo,  cti  e  diffusa 

in  su  le  vecchie  e  in  su  le  nuove  cuoia, 

E  sillogismo,  che  la  mia  ha  conchiusa 
acutamente  si,  che  in  verso  d'  ella 
ogni  dimostrazion  mi  pare  ottusa." 

If  the  reading  of  the  "Paradiso"  turns  one  to 
other  books,  so  much  the  better.  Aristotle  is 
worth  while;  he  holds  the  germ  of  what  is  best  in 
modern  life;  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  his  echo, 
with  new  harmonies  added  the  Wagner  to  Aris- 
totle's Mozart.  No — that  is  going  too  far! — 
the  musical  comparison  fails.  "If  thou  should'st 
never   see  my  face  again,  pray  for  my  soul,"  is 


POETS  AND  POETRY  105 

King  Arthur's  prayer.  It  is  the  prayer  of  Pope 
Gregory  that  saved  Trajan. 

When  we  come  to  the  "Purgatorio,"  like  the 
"Paradiso"  too  neglected,  we  find  much  that  il- 
luminates our  minds  and  touches  our  hearts.  The 
"Purgatorio"  is  not  without  humour,  and  it  is 
certainly  very  human.  For  instance,  there  is  the 
case  of  the  negligent  ruler,  Nino  de'  Visconti. 
Dante  is  frankly  pleased  to  meet  him,  but  his  ad- 
dress is  hardly  tactful.  He  is  evidently  surprised 
to  find  that  Nino  is  not  in  Hell, 

When  he  came  near  to  me  I  said  to  him; 
gentle  Judge  Nino,  how  I'm  delighted  well 
that  I  have  seen  thee  here  and  not  in  Hell. 

Nino  begs  that  his  innocent  daughter,  Giovanna, 
may  be  asked  by  Dante,  on  his  return  to  earth,  to 
pray  for  him.  He  is  not  pleased  that  his  widow 
should  desire  to  marry 

the  Milanese  who  blazoned  a  viper  on  his  shield. 

He  thinks  that  his  wife  has  ceased  to  love  him  as 
she  has  discarded  her  "white  wimples,"  which, 
if  she  marries  this  inferior  person,  she  may  long  for 
once  again!    And  he  adds,  rather  cynically,  for  a 


106  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

blessed  soul  in  Purgatory,  that  through  her  one 
may  mightily  well 

know  how  short  a  time  love  may  last  in  woman,  if  the  eye 
and  the  touch  do  not  keep  it  alive. 

One  must  admit  that  there  is  an  element  of 
humour — not  for  the  victim — in  the  "Inferno," 
when  Dante  puts  Pope  Boniface  VIII.  into  Hell 
three  and  a  half  years  before  he  died!  Nicholas 
III.,  whom  Dante  thought  guilty  of  the  unpardon- 
able sin  of  simony,  had  preceded  Boniface;  and  he 
says, 

E  se  non  fosse  ch*  ancor  lo  mi  vieta 
la  riverenza  delle  somme  chiavi, 
che  tu  tenesti  nella  vita  lieta 
V  userei  parole  ancor  piii  gravi — 

But  for  consolation,  there  is  no  great  poem  so 
good  as  the  "Paradiso." 

English  and  American  Verse 

Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  tells  us  how  thrilled 
the  youths  of  his  generation  were  when  the  new 
poet,  Tennyson,  "swam  into  their  ken."  It  is 
difficult  for  the  young  of  to-day  to  believe  this. 
There  is  no  great  reigning  poet  to-day;  there  are 


POETS  AND  POETRY  107 

great  numbers  of  fair  poets,  who  are  hailed  as 
crown  princes  by  the  groups  that  gather  about 
them.  Whatever  the  old  may  say,  this  is  a  good 
sign.  Any  evidence  of  a  sincere  interest  in  poetry 
is  a  good  sign.  Tennyson's  "Dream  of  Fair 
Women"  and  his  portrait  studies  broke  in  on  the 
old  tradition.  "The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  with  its 
pictures  of  silence  and  its  fine  transmutation  of 
commonplace  into  something  very  beautiful,  was 
new. 

We  who  succeeded  Stedman  by  some  years 
loved  all  the  beauty  of  Tennyson  while  we  were 
not  especially  struck  by  those  mediaeval  lay  figures 
which  he  labelled  "King  Arthur"  and  "Sir  Gala- 
had" and  "Sir  Percival."  They  were  too  much 
like  what  the  English  people  at  that  time  insisted 
that  the  Prince  Consort  was.  Even  Sir  Lancelot 
would  have  profited  in  our  eyes  by  a  touch  of  the 
fire  of  Milton's  "Lucifer."  But  the  lyricism  of 
Tennyson,  the  music  of  Tennyson,  is  as  real  now 
as  it  was  then.  It  is  the  desire  for  "  independence," 
the  fear  of  following  a  conventionality,  a  fear  that 
calls  itself  audacity,  which  brushes  away  the 
delicate  and  scientific  of  this  exquisite  poet  simply 
because  he  does  not  represent  a  Movement.     And 


108   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

yet  all  these  new  movements  are  very  old  move- 
ments. The  result  of  the  education  given  me  by 
books  was  to  convince  me  that  the  man  of  culture 
proclaims  himself  third-rate  if  he  looks  on  any 
literary  expression  as  really  new  and  if  he  cannot 
enjoy  the  old,  when  the  old  is  of  all  time.  The 
beautiful  and  the  real  can  never  be  old  or  new  be- 
cause they  are  the  same  through  the  movement  of 
time.  To  explain  what  I  mean,  let  me  come  sud- 
denly down  to  date  and  permit  me  to  quote  from  Sir 
Arthur  Quiller-Couch's  "On  the  Art  of  Reading." 
He  is  writing  of  the  Bible,  which  is  never  old : 

I  daresay,  after  all,  that  the  best  way  is  not  to  bother  a 
boy  too  early  and  overmuch  with  history;  that  the  best  way 
is  to  let  him  ramp  at  first  through  the  Scriptures  even  as  he 
might  through  "The  Arabian  Nights":  to  let  him  take  the 
books  as  they  come,  merely  indicating,  for  instance,  that 
Job  is  a  great  poem,  the  Psalms  great  lyrics,  the  story  of  Ruth 
a  lovely  idyll,  the  Song  of  Songs  the  perfection  of  an  Eastern 
love-poem.  Well,  and  what  then?  He  will  certainly  get 
less  of  "The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  into  it,  and  certainly 
more  of  the  truth  of  the  East.  There  he  will  feel  the  whole 
splendid  barbaric  story  for  himself:  the  flocks  of  Abraham 
and  Laban;  the  trek  of  Jacob's  sons  to  Egypt  for  corn;  the 
figures  of  Rebekah  at  the  well,  Ruth  at  the  gleaning,  and 
Rizpah  beneath  the  gibbet;  Sisera  bowing  in  weariness; 
Saul — great  Saul — by  the  tent-prop  with  the  jewels  in  his 
turban : 


POETS  AND  POETRY  109 

"All  its  lordly  male-sapphires,  and  rubies  courageous  at 
heart." 

Or  consider — to  choose  one  or  two  pictures  out  of  the  tre- 
mendous procession — consider  Michal,  Saul's  royal  daughter: 
how  first  she  is  given  in  marriage  to  David  to  be  a  snare  for 
him;  how,  loving  him,  she  saves  his  life,  letting  him  down 
from  the  window  and  dressing  up  an  image  on  the  bed  in 
his  place;  how,  later,  she  is  handed  over  to  another  husband 
Phaltiel,  how  David  demands  her  back,  and  she  goes: 

"And  her  husband  (Phaltiel)  went  with  her  along  weeping 
behind  her  to  Bahurim.  Then  said  Abner  unto  him,  Go, 
return.     And  he  returned." 

Or,  still  later,  how  the  revulsion  takes  her,  Saul's  daughter 
as  she  sees  David  capering  home  before  the  ark,  and  how  her 
affection  had  done  with  this  emotional  man  of  the  ruddy 
countenance,  so  prone  to  weep  in  his  bed: 

"And  as  the  ark  of  the  Lord  came  into  the  city  of  David, 
Michal,  Saul's  daughter" — 

Mark  the  three  words — 

"Michal,  Saul's  daughter  looked  through  a  window,  and 
saw  King  David  leaping  and  dancing  before  the  Lord;  and 
she  despised  him  in  her  heart." 


Mr.  Galsworthy  or  Mr.  W.  L.  George  or  Mr. 
Maxwell,  who  are  rapidly  becoming  too  old- 
fashioned  for  the  young,  or  Mrs.  Wharton,  or  Mrs. 
Gertrude  Atherton  would  treat  this  episode  in 
sympathy  with  what  they  might  conceive  to  be 
the  trend  of  present  emotion ;  for  it  is  with  the  emo- 
tions and  not  with  the  mind  or  the  will  that  the 


110  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

novelist  of  the  day  before  yesterday  mostly  deals. 
If  Mr.  James  Huneker  had  translated  this  into 
the  prose  of  his  moment,  it  would  have  flamed  with 
minutely  carved  jewels,  glowed  with  a  perfume 
and  colour  of  crushed  roses,  and  choked  the  reader 
with  the  odour  of  musk.  But  could  he  have  made 
it  any  "newer"?  Or  if  he  could  have  made  it 
"newer,"  could  he  have  made  it  more  splendid 
and  appealing? 

The  old  is  new,  and  the  new  is  old  in  art  and 
literature — in  life  itself,  and  the  man  who  scorned 
Keats  because  Swinburne  and  Rossetti  were  new; 
or  who  scorns  Browning — the  best  of  Browning — 
lacks  the  first  requisite  of  true  cultivation  which 
is  founded  on  the  truth  that  beauty  is  beyond  the 
touch  of  time.  The  women  in  Frangois  Villon's 
"Ballade  of  Dead  Ladies"  are  gone,  but  their 
beauty  remains  in  that  song.  This  beauty  might 
be  none  the  less  beautiful  if  expressed  in  vers  libre; 
its  beauty  might  take  a  new  flavour  from  our  time. 
The  fact  only  that  it  was  of  our  time  and  treated 
in  the  manner  of  our  time,  could  not  give  it  that 
essential  and  divine  something  which  is  perennial, 
universal,  and  perhaps  eternal. 

Much  affectionate  reading  of  poetry — and  poetry 


POETS  AND  POETRY  111 

read  in  any  other  way  is  like  the  crackling  of  small 
sticks  under  a  pot  in  the  open  air  on  a  damp  day — 
leads  one  to  consider  the  structure  of  verse  and  to 
ask  how  singing  effects  are  best  produced.  This 
inquiry  has  led  some  of  the  sincerest  of  the  younger 
poets  to  throw  aside  the  older  conventions,  and, 
imitating  Debussy,  Richard  Strauss,  and  even 
newer  composers,  to  produce  that  "free  verse" 
which,  in  the  hands  of  the  inexpert,  the  lazy,  or 
the  ignorant,  becomes  lawless  verse.  It  is  ex- 
asperating to  the  intolerant  to  find  writers,  young 
in  experience  if  not  always  young  in  age,  talking  of 
themselves  as  discoverers — brave  or  audacious  dis- 
coverers— as  adventurers,  reckless  as  Balboa,  or 
Cortez,  or  Ponce  de  Leon;  and  then,  to  hear  some 
of  the  old  and  conventional  violently  attacking 
these  verse  makers  as  if  they  were  new  and  dan- 
gerous revolutionists. 

The  truth  is  that  vers  libre  has  its  place,  and  it 
ought  to  have  a  high  place;  but  the  writer  who  at- 
tempts it  must  have  a  very  perfect  ear  for  the 
nuances  of  music  and  great  art  in  his  technique 
applied  to  the  use  of  words.  Some  of  the  disciples 
of  Miss  Amy  Lowell  have  this,  but  they  are  few. 
Whether  Miss  Lowell  has  mastered  the  science  or 


112  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

not,  she  has  the  fine  art  of  producing  musical 
effects,  delicate  and  various  and  even  splendid. 
But  there  are  others! 

It  may  have  been  Tennyson,  or  Theocritus,  or 
Campion  that  led  me  to  read  Coventry  Patmore. 
I  know  that  it  was  not  his  "The  Angel  in  the 
House"  which  led  me  on.  That  seemed  as  little 
interesting  or  important  as  the  proverbial  sayings 
of  Martin  Farquhar  Tupper;  but  one  day  I  found 
"The  Unknown  Eros"  and  a  little  later  "The 
Toys,"  and  then  his  "Night  and  Sleep,"  one  of  the 
most  musical  poems  in  our  language. 

How  strange  at  night  the  bay 
Of  dogs,  how  wild  the  note 
Of  cocks  that  scream  for  day, 
In  homesteads  far  remote; 
How  strange  and  wild  to  hear 
The  old  and  crumbling  tower, 
Amid  the  darkness,  suddenly 
Take  tongue  and  speak  the  hour! 

Although  the  music  of  "Night  and  Sleep"  is  not 
dependent  upon  the  rime,  it  is  plain — as  the  form 
of  poetry  appeals  to  the  ear — that  the  rime  is  a 
gain.  Yet  one  does  not  miss  it  in  the  fifth  and 
seventh  lines  of  each   stanza.     The  real  musical 


POETS  AND  POETRY  113 

charm  of  the  poem — only  one  stanza,  of  four,  is 
given  here — lies  in  the  management  of  the  rhythm. 

We  have  only  to  fill  up  the  measure  in  every  line  as  well  as  in 
the  seventh,  in  order  to  change  this  verse  from  the  slowest 
and  most  mournful  to  the  most  rapid  and  high-spirited  of  all 
English,  the  common  eight-syllable  quatrain, 

says  Mr.  Patmore  in  his  "Essay  on  English  Met- 
rical Law," 

a  measure  particularly  recommended  by  the  early  critics,  and 
continually  chosen  by  poets  in  all  times  for  erotic  poetry  on 
account  of  its  joyful  air.  The  reason  of  this  unusual  rapidity 
of  movement  is  the  unusual  character  of  the  eight-syllable 
verse  as  acatalectic,  almost  all  other  kinds  of  verse  being 
catalectic  on  at  least  one  syllable,  implying  a  final  pause  of 
corresponding  duration. 

Mr.  Patmore  here  shows  that  the  rime  in  this 
lovely  "Night  and  Sleep"  is  merely  accessory,  a 
lightly  played  accompaniment  to  a  song  which 
would  be  as  beautiful  a  song  without  it,  yet  which 
gains  a  certain  accent  through  this  accompani- 
ment; and  that  the  real  questions  in  verse  are  of 
rhythm  and  time.  Tennyson,  whose  technique, even 
in  the  use  of  sibilants,  will  bear  the  closest  scrutiny, 
often  proves  the  merely  accessory  value  of  rime, 
but  in  no  instance  more  fully  than  in 


114  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Tears,  idle  tears,  I  know  not  what  they  mean, 
Tears  from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair 
Rise  in  the  heart  and  gather  in  the  eyes, 
In  looking  on  the  happy  autumn  fields, 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more. 


There  is  every  reason  why  the  modern  reader 
should  have  become  tired  of  academic  poetry. 
When  poetry  divorced  itself  from  music  and  be- 
came the  slave  of  fixed  rules  of  metre  which  could 
not  be  imitated  with  any  real  success  in  English, 
it  sealed  its  own  fate  as  a  beloved  visitant  to  the 
hearts  of  the  people.  Pope  and  his  coterie  closed 
the  door  on  lyrical  poets  like  Thomas  Campion, 
and  in  their  hearts  they,  like  Voltaire,  rather  de- 
spised Shakespeare  for  his  vulgarisms. 

The  truth  that  poetry  was  primarily  written  to 
be  sung  is  forgotten,  and  even  in  France  the  chant 
of  the  Alexandrine,  which  both  Rachel  and  Sarah 
Bernhardt  restored,  was  lost  in  a  monotonous  reci- 
tation. For  myself,  I  tried  to  get  to  the  root  of  the 
matter  by  reading  Thomas  Campion — Charles 
Scribner's  Sons  print  a  good  edition  of  his  songs, 
masks,  etc.,  edited  by  A.  H.  Bullen — as  an  anti- 
dote to  Walt  Whitman.  In  fact,  my  acquaintance 
with  the  Poet  of  Camden  convinced  me  that  his 


POETS  AND  POETRY  115 

use  of  what  is  to-day  called  vers  libre  resembled 
somewhat  Carlyle's  Teutonic  contortions  of  style. 
It  was  impossible  to  get  from  the  "Good  Gray 
Poet"  the  reasons  of  his  method.  I  gathered  that 
he  looked  on  rhythm  as  sometimes  a  walk,  a  quick- 
step, a  saunter,  a  hop-and-skip,  a  hurried  dash,  or 
a  slow  march;  it  seemed  to  depend  with  him  on 
the  action  of  the  heart,  the  acceleration  of  the 
pulse,  or  the  movement  of  the  thought. 

But  no  one  who  knows  the  best  in  Walt  Whit- 
man's poems  can  fail  to  perceive  that  there  were 
times  when  he  understood  thoroughly  that  poetry, 
expressed  poetically,  must  be  musical.  It  is  a 
great  pity  that  some  of  our  newer  poets  do  not 
understand  this.  In  their  revolt  from  the  outworn 
academic  rules,  they  have  gone  the  length  of  the 
most  advanced  Cubists,  and  do  not  realize  that 
no  amount  of  splendid  visualization  compensates 
for  a  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  art  of  making  melo- 
dies. It  is  unfortunate,  too,  that  the  imitators  of 
Amy  Lowell,  many  of  whom  have  neither  her  feel- 
ing for  colour,  her  great  power  of  concentration, 
nor  her  naturally  good  ear,  should  imagine  that 
vers  libre  means  the  throwing  together  of  words  in 
chaos.     Even  Strauss 's  "Electra"  is  founded  on 


116  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

carefully  considered  rules;  his  discords  are  not 
accidents. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  study  of  Sidney  Lanier's 
"Science  of  English  Verse"  would  suppress  the  art 
of  expression,  even  in  a  genius.  By  the  time  he 
learned  how  to  write  verse  he  would  be  too  old  to 
write  verse  at  all!  There  are  less  intricate  books. 
I  learned  from  the  theories  and  the  odes  of  Cov- 
entry Patmore  and  the  "Observations  in  the  Art 
of  English  Poesy"  of  Thomas  Campion  and  his 
practice  that  the  best  vers  libre  has  freedom, 
unexpectedness,  lyrical  lightness,  and  an  appar- 
ently unstudied  charm,  because  the  poet  had 
striven,  not  to  sing  as  a  bird  sings,  without  art, 
but  to  sing  in  a  civilized  world  as  a  great  tenor  in 
the  opera  sings,  because  he  had  acquired  his 
method  of  almost  perfect  expression  through 
science  and  art.  And,  if  one  wants  an  example 
of  the  intangible  "something,"  expressed  artistic- 
ally, why  not  take  Benet's  "Immoral  Ballad"? 
A  little  thing,  sir;  but  a  poet's  own  and  so,  in- 
capable of  being  analyzed  by  any  rules  known  to 
the  pundits.  But  it  is  not  vers  libre.  If  it  were, 
its  intangible  appeal  would  not  exist. 

Nearly    every    versifier    who    disregards    those 


POETS  AND  POETRY  117 

models  of  form  in  verse  which  include  rime,  or 
whose  cadences  are  informal,  is  set  down  as  an 
imitator  of  Walt  Whitman.  When  I  was  young, 
Walt  Whitman  seemed  to  have  been  established 
as  a  strange,  erratic,  and  godless  person,  whose 
indecencies  were  his  principal  stock  in  trade. 
Emerson's  practical  repudiation  of  him  had  had 
its  effect,  and  the  very  respectable — that  is,  gentle- 
men of  the  class  of  the  vestrymen  of  Grace  Church 
in  New  York  of  his  time — looked  on  him  with 
horror.  He  had,  it  seems,  attacked  established 
religion  when  he  made  his  onslaught  in  the  Brook- 
lyn Eagle  on  that  eminently  important  body. 

The  shock  of  the  arrival  of  Walt  Whitman  had 
been  broken  by  the  time  that  I  had  begun  to  read 
poetry  wherever  I  found  it;  and  I  accepted  the 
curious  mixture  of  prose  and  poetry  in  Walt 
WTiitman  just  as  I  accepted  the  musical  Wagner. 
At  that  time  we  had  not  yet  learned  to  know  that 
Wagner's  music  was  melodious;  we  had  not  yet 
discovered  that  "Lohengrin,"  for  instance,  was 
woven  of  many  melodies,  for  they  were  not  de- 
tached and  made  into  arias.  What  could  be  ex- 
pected of  young  persons  brought  up  on  "The 
Bohemian  Girl"  and  "Maritana"? 


118  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

And  yet  we  soon  found  out  without  any  help 
from  the  critics  that  Walt  Whitman  was  essentially 
a  poet,  and  we  suspected  that  his  roughness  had 
been  deliberately  adopted  as  the  best  possible 
form  in  which  to  clothe  ideas  which  were  not  con- 
ventional, and  to  attract  attention.  Most  of  the 
young  at  that  time  thought  that  he  had  as  much 
right  to  do  this  as  Browning  had  to  be  wilfully 
inarticulate.  The  critics  did  not  concern  us  much. 
There  was  always  a  little  coterie  of  students  at  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania  or  at  Jefferson  College, 
or  young  men  under  the  influence  of  Mr.  Edward 
Roth  or  Mr.  Henry  Peterson.  Among  these  was 
a  brilliant  Mexican,  David  Cerna;  Charles  Arthur 
Henry,  who  died  young;  Daniel  Dawson,  whose 
"Seeker  in  the  Marshes"  ought  still  to  live.  He 
was  a  devout  Whitmanite.  Much  younger  was 
Harrison  Morris,  whose  opinions,  carrying  great 
weight,  occasionally  floated  to  us.  As  I  have 
said,  WTiitman  neither  startled  nor  shocked  us 
nor  did  he  cause  us  to  imitate  him.  At  this  time, 
I  was  deep  in  Heinrich  Heine,  whose  prose  was  not 
easy  to  read,  but  whose  lyrics,  with  a  very  slight 
help  from  the  dictionary,  were  entrancing!  I 
could   never   understand,   being  enraptured   with 


POETS  AND  POETRY  119 

Heine's  lyrics  at  that  time,  why  Whitman  should 
have  chosen  such  a  poor  medium  for  lyrical  ex- 
pression or  such  a  rude  utterance  for  some  noble 
ideas.     That  he  chose  at  times  to  put  into  speech 
sensual  dreams  or  passing  shadows  of  evil  thoughts 
astonished  us  no  more  than  the  existence  of  the 
photographic  reproductions,  then  the  fashion,  of 
the  gargoyles  from  the  Cathedral  of  Notre  Dame, 
or   the    strange   and    very    improper   representa- 
tions of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  which  were  some- 
times  carved   on  the  backs   and  the  undersides 
of  the  stalls  in  old  cathedrals.     We  Philadelphians 
thought  that  it  was  not  a  gentlemanly  performance. 
There  were  persons  who  wallowed  in  pools  of  de- 
civilization,  and,  though  they  might  whisper  of 
their  mental  wallowings  in  intimate  circles,  there 
was  no  point  whatever  in  putting  them  into  print. 
But   the  great  passages — there  are  very  many — 
and  the  noble  complete  poems — there  are  a  few — 
of   Whitman    were   chosen   and   recited   and  en- 
joyed. 

Besides,  Whitman  lived  just  across  the  Dela- 
ware River,  and  one  could  meet  him  almost  at  any 
time  in  a  street  car  or  lounging  about  his  haunts  in 
Camden.     As  he  was  part  of  our  everyday  life  he 


120  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

did  not  for  us  represent  anything  essentially  new. 
When  Swinburne  and  Rossetti  and  the  Preraphael- 
ites,  however,  came  into  our  possession,  it  was 
quite  another  thing!  There  was  no  Whitman 
movement  among  our  young.  There  was  a  marked, 
but  not  concentrated,  reflection  of  the  Preraphael- 
ites. 

Swinburne's  music  took  us  by  storm!  It  did 
not  mean  that  a  young  man  had  a  depraved  mind 
because  he  spouted  "Faustine"  or  quoted  verse 
after  verse  of  the  roses  and  raptures  of  Swinburne. 
It  simply  meant  that  a  breath  of  rich,  sensuous 
odours  from  an  exotic  island  had  swept  across  the 
conventional  lamp-posts  and  well-trimmed  gardens 
of  his  life.  I  wonder  if  any  young  man  feels  to- 
day, in  reading  Masefield's  poems,  or  Walter  de  la 
Mare's,  or  Seeger's,  or  Amy  Lowell's,  or  Robert 
Frost's,  or  even  Alfred  Noyes's,  the  thrill  that 
stirred  us  when  we  heard  the  choruses  in  "  Atalanta 
in  Calydon"  or  Rossetti's  "Blessed  Damozel"? 
And  there  was  William  Morris  and  "The  Earthly 
Paradise!" 

The  first  appearance  of  Kipling's  poems  re- 
called the  old  thrills  of  "new"  poets,  but  of  late, 
though  the  prospects  of  poetry  are  beginning  to 


POETS  AND  POETRY  121 

revive,  no  very  modern  poet  seems  to  have  become 
a  part  of  the  daily  lives  of  the  young,  who  de- 
clare that  the  world  is  changed,  and  that  the  Old 
hold  no  torches  for  them  by  which  they  can  dis- 
cover what  they  really  want!  The  more  things 
change,  the  more  they  remain  the  same!  And 
the  young  woman  who  read  Swinburne  surrepti- 
tiously and  smoked  a  cigarette  in  private  now 
reads  Havelock  Ellis  on  summer  porches,  and  puffs 
at  a  cigarette  in  public  whenever  she  feels  like  it. 
She  is  really  no  more  advanced  than  the  girl  of 
the  period  of  the  eighties,  and  not  any  more  as- 
tonishing. It's  the  same  old  girl !  And  the  young 
men  who  discovered  Swinburne  and  Rossetti,  and 
who  were  rather  bored  by  the  thinness  of  their 
aftermath,  the  aesthetic  poets,  really  got  more 
colour  and  amazement  and  delight  out  of  the 
flashing  of  the  meteors  than  the  youth  of  to-day 
seem  to  get.  It  was  the  fashion  then  to  be  blase 
and  cynical  and  bored  with  life;  but  nobody  was 
really  bored  because  there  were  too  many  amusing 
and  delightful  things  in  the  world — as  there  are 
now. 

Joaquin  Miller,  with  his  gorgeous  parrots  and 
burning  Southern  lights  and  his  intensities  and  his 


122  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

simulated  passion,  did  not  last  long.  In  England 
he  was  looked  on  as  a  typical  American  poet,  more 
decent  than  Walt  Whitman,  less  vulgar,  but  with 
the  charm  Whitman  had  for  the  English — that  no 
Englishman  could  ever  be  like  him!  In  England 
they  wanted  the  Americans  raw  and  fresh  and  with 
a  savage  flavour  about  them. 

I  read  the  poems  of  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  of 
Edith  Thomas,  of  Robert  Underwood  Johnson — 
whose  "Italian  Rhapsody"  and  "The  Winter 
Hour"  can  never  be  forgotten — and  certain  verses 
of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman.  But  les  jeunes 
prefer  the  new  verse  makers.  There  is  even  a 
kind  of  cult  for  the  Imagists.  A  spokesman  for 
the  Imagists  tells  us  briefly  that  "free  verse"  is  a 
term  that  may  be  attached  to  all  that  increasing 
amount  of  writing  whose  cadence  is  more  marked, 
more  definite,  and  closer  knit  than  that  of  prose, 
but  which  is  not  so  violently  or  so  obviously  ac- 
cented as  the  so-called  "regular  verse."  Richard 
Aldington's  "Childhood"  is  a  very  typical  ex- 
ample of  vers  lihre.  It  is  also  an  Imagist  poem. 
It  will  be  remarked  that  it  is  so  free  that  there  is 
no  cadence  that  any  musician  could  find.  It  is  a 
pretty  little  joyful  trifle! 


POETS  AND  POETRY  123 

There  was  nothing  to  see, 

Nothing  to  do, 

Nothing  to  play  with, 

Except  that  in  an  empty  room  upstairs 

There  was  a  large  tin  box 

Containing  reproductions  of  the  Magna  Charta, 

Of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 

And  of  a  letter  from  Raleigh  after  the  Armada; 

There  were  also  several  packets  of  stamps, 

Yellow  and  blue  Guatemala  parrots, 

Blue  stags  and  red  baboons  and  birds  from  Sarawak, 

Indians  and  Men-of-war 

From  the  United  States, 

And  the  green  and  red  portraits 

Of  King  Francobollo 

Of  Italy. 

I  don't  believe  in  God 

I  do  believe  in  avenging  gods 

Who  plague  us  for  sins  we  never  sinned 

But  who  avenge  us. 

That's  why  I'll  never  have  a  child, 

Never  shut  up  in  a  chrysalis  in  a  match-box 

For  the  moth  to  spoil  and  crush  its  bright  colours, 

Beating  its  wings  against  the  dingy  prison-wall. 

Alfred  Kreymborg  is  also  very  free,  and  only 
sometimes  musical,  but  he  hammers  in  his  images 
with  a  vengeance.  But  of  all  the  new  Americans, 
Vachel  Lindsay's  jolly  fantasies,  with  a  slightly 
heard  banjo  accompaniment,  are  the  most  fasci- 
nating and  least  tiresome  of  all  the  New. 


124  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

When  one  has  wallowed  for  a  time  with  the 
Imagists  and  carefully  examined  the  vers  librists, 
with  the  aid  of  a  catalogue  and  explanations,  one 
turns  to  the  "Collected  Poems"  of  Walter  de  la 
Mare.     Come,  now!     Listen  to  this: 


When  slim  Sophia  mounts  her  horse 
And  paces  down  the  avenue, 

It  seems  an  inward  melody 
She  paces  to. 

Each  narrow  hoof  is  lifted  high 

Beneath  the  dark  enclustering  pines, 

A  silver  ray  within  his  bit 
And  bridle  shines. 

His  eye  burns  deep,  his  tail  is  arched, 
And  streams  upon  the  shadowy  air, 

The  daylight  sleeks  his  jetty  flanks, 
His  mistress'  hair. 

Her  habit  flows  in  darkness  down, 
Upon  the  stirrup  rests  her  foot, 

Her  brow  is  lifted,  as  if  earth 
She  heeded  not. 

"Tis  silent  in  the  avenue, 

The  sombre  pines  are  mute  of  song, 
The  blue  is  dark,  there  moves  no  breeze 

The  boughs  among. 


POETS  AND  POETRY  125 

When  slim  Sophia  mounts  her  horse 

And  paces  down  the  avenue, 
It  seems  an  inward  melody 

She  paces  to. 

It  is  difficult  for  the  simple  minded  to  understand 
why  Walter  de  la  Mare,  who  is  a  singer  with 
something  to  sing  about,  cannot  be  classed  as  an 
Imagist.  He  uses  the  language  of  common  speech 
and  tries  always  to  say  exactly  what  he  means;  he 
suits  his  mood  to  his  rhythm,  and  his  cadences  to 
his  ideas;  he  believes  passionately  in  the  artistic 
value  of  modern  life;  but  he  does  not  seem  to  see 
why  he  should  not  write  about  an  old-fashioned 
aeroplane  of  the  year  1914,  if  he  can  make  it  the 
centre  of  something  interesting. 

The  professional  Imagist  tries  to  produce  poetry 
that  is  hard  and  clear  and  never  blurred  or  in- 
definite, and  he  holds  that  concentration  is  the 
very  essence  of  poetry.  The  Imagist  fights  for 
"free  verse"  as  for  the  principle  of  liberty.  But 
why  does  he  fight?  If  "free  verse"  is  musical,  if 
it  expresses  a  mood  or  an  emotion  or  a  thought  in 
terms  that  appeal  to  the  mind  or  the  heart  or  the 
imagination,  why  should  it  be  necessary  to  fight 
for  it?     It  may  suit  certain  verse  makers  to  make 


126  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

men  of  straw  in  order  "to  fight"  for  them;  but  all 
the  world  loves  a  poet,  if  the  poet  once  touches 
its  heart.  "The  Toys"  of  Coventry  Pat  more  is  a 
good  example  of  what  "free  verse"  ought  to  be. 
But  it  is  not  free  because  it  is  lawless;  its  freedom 
is  the  freedom  of  all  true  art  which  does  not  ignore, 
which  obediently  accepts,  certain  laws  that  govern 
the  expression  of  the  beautiful.  Mr.  Richard  Alding- 
ton's "Daisy"  is  certainly  a  less  appealing  poem 
than  that  one  in  which  Swinburne  sings  of  the  lady 
who  forgot  his  kisses,  and  he  forgot  her  name! 

Jose  de  Heredia,  in  "Les  Trophees,"  is  both  an 
Imagist  and  a  Symbolist.  He  has  the  inspiration 
and  the  science  of  the  Sibyl  without  her  contor- 
tions. It  is  unfortunate  that  the  truculent  atti- 
tude of  the  professional  makers  of  "free  verse" 
should  have  arrayed  a  small  and  angry  group 
against  them;  and  this  group  will  have  none  of 
Robert  Frost,  who  is  certainly  a  poet  and  a  poet  of 
great  courage  and  originality.  There  are  others, 
however,  who  may  not  be  imitators  of  Robert 
Frost,  but  who  seem  as  if  they  were.  Tennyson's 
"Owl,"  which  is  looked  on  to-day  as  an  example  of 
Victorian  idiocy,  is  really  better  than  Mr.  T.  S. 
Eliot's  "Cousin  Nancy": 


POETS  AND  POETRY  127 

Miss  Nancy  Ellicott 

Strode  across  the  hills  and  broke  them, 

Rode  across  the  hills  and  broke  them — 

The  barren  New  England  hills — 

Riding  to  hounds 

Over  the  cow-pasture. 

Miss  Nancy  Ellicott  smoked 

And  danced  all  the  modern  dances; 

And  her  aunts  were  not  quite  sure  how  they  felt  about  it, 

But  they  knew  that  it  was  modern. 

Upon  the  glazen  shelves  kept  watch 
Matthew  and  Waldo,  guardians  of  the  faith, 
The  army  of  unalterable  law. 

The  Imagist  does  not  believe  in  ornament,  and 
this  glimpse  of  character  might  be  uttered  in  one 
sentence.  Perhaps,  however,  a  tendency  to  orna- 
mentation might  have  made  the  poem  at  least  dec- 
orative. After  all,  when  one  has  emerged  from  the 
rarefied  atmosphere  of  the  Imagist,  the  Symbolist, 
and  the  vers  librist,  one  swims  into  the  splendours 
of  Francis  Thompson  as  one  might  take  refuge 
from  a  wooden  farmhouse  unprotected  by  trees, 
in  a  Gothic  spire,  a  Byzantine  altar-piece,  or  a 
series  of  Moorish  arabesques.  It  is  a  frightful  de- 
scent from  the  heaven  of  Crashaw  and  the  places 
of  the  Seraphim  in  "The  Hound  of  Heaven,"  by 
Francis  Thompson,  to  Richard  Aldington. 


128  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Each  lover  of  poetry  has  his  favourite  poem  and 
his  favourite  poet,  and  it  has  always  seemed  to  me 
that  one  of  the  hardest  tasks  of  the  critic  is  to  de- 
cide on  the  position  of  a  poet  among  poets,  or  of 
a  poet  in  relation  to  life.  For  myself,  to  speak 
modestly,  I  cannot  see  how  I  could  condemn  the 
taste  of  the  man  who  thinks  that  Browning  and 
Swinburne  and  Tennyson,  and,  in  fact,  nearly  all 
the  modern  English  poets,  deserve  to  be  classed 
indiscriminately  together  as  "inspiring."  And  I 
cannot  even  scorn  the  man  who  declares  that  Ten- 
nyson is  demode  because  his  heroines  are  in  crino- 
line and  conventional,  and  his  mediaeval  knights 
cut  out  of  pasteboard. 

By  comparison  with  the  original  of  the  "Idylls 
of  the  King"  this  statement  seems  to  be  true. 
Sir  Thomas  Malory's  knights  and  ladies — by 
modern  standards  they  would  hardly  be  called 
"ladies" — do  not  bear  the  test  of  even  the  most 
elemental  demands  of  modern  taste.  They  are  as 
different  as  the  characters  in  Saxo  Grammaticus's 
"  Hamblet "  are  from  those  in  Shakespeare's  "  Ham- 
let." But  I  may  enjoy  the  smoothness  of  the 
"Idylls  of  the  King,"  their  bursts  of  exquisite 
lyricism,  their  cadences,  and  their  impossibilities, 


POETS  AND  POETRY  129 

and  at  the  same  time  read  Sir  Thomas  Malory 
with  delight.  When  I  hear  raptures  over  Brown- 
ing and  Swinburne,  when  people  grow  dithyrambic 
over  John  Masefield  and  Alfred  Kreyrnborg  and 
others  new — chacun  a  son  gout — I  feel  that  by 
comparison  with  Francis  Thompson,  these  poets 
are  not  rich.  They  are  poor  because  they  seem  to 
leave  out  God;  that  is,  the  God  of  the  Christians. 

Swinburne  could  never  be  a  real  pagan,  because 
he  could  not  escape  the  shadow  of  the  Crucifixion. 
Theocritus  was  a  real  pagan  because  he  knew 
neither  the  sorrow  of  the  Crucifixion  nor  the  joy 
of  the  Resurrection.  Keats  was  a  lover  of  Greece, 
was  ardent,  inexpressibly  beautiful,  sensuously 
charming;  but  Keats  could  no  more  be  a  real 
Greek  than  Shakespeare,  in  "Julius  Caesar," 
could  be  a  real  Roman.  Nor  could  Tennyson,  nor 
Browning,  nor  William  Morris,  nor  the  Preraphael- 
ites  be  really  out  of  their  time,  for  they  could  not 
understand  the  essentially  religious  qualities  of 
the  times  into  which  they  tried  to  project  them- 
selves. 

If  you  compare  the  "Idylls"  of  Tennyson  with 
those  idylls  of  Theocritus  he  imitated,  you  easily 
see  that  his  pictures  are  not  even  bad  copies  of  the 


130  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

originals;  they  are  not  even  paraphrases — to  turn 
again  from  painting  to  literature.  They  are  fine 
in  themselves,  and  the  critics  of  the  future,  more 
reasonable  than  ours  and  less  reactionary,  will 
give  them  their  true  place.  As  for  Browning,  it  is 
only  necessary  to  read  the  Italian  writers  of  the 
Renascence,  to  find  how  very  modern  he  is  in  his 
poems  that  touch  on  that  period.  He  is  always 
modern.  With  all  his  efforts  he  cannot  under- 
stand that  mixture  of  paganism  and  Catholicism 
which  made  the  Renascence  possible.  He  seems 
to  assume  that  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  time  of 
the  Renascence  produced  men  in  whom  paganism 
struggled  with  Christianity.  The  fact  is  that 
paganism  had  melted  into  Christianity  and  Christi- 
anity had  given  it  a  new  light  and  a  new  form. 
It  was  not  difficult  for  an  artist  of  the  Renas- 
cence to  look  on  a  statuette  of  Leda  and  the  Swan 
or  Danae  and  the  Descent  of  Jupiter  as  a  shower  of 
gold,  as  prefiguring  the  Incarnation.  There  was 
nothing  blasphemous  in  this  pagan  symbolism  of  a 
pagan  prophecy  of  the  birth  of  a  God  from  a  virgin. 
It  does  not  follow  that  Browning  is  not  power- 
fully beautiful  and  essentially  poetical,  even  when 
he  reads  modern  meanings  impossibly  into  the  life 


POETS  AND  POETRY  131 

of  older  days.  Nevertheless,  he  is  unsatisfactory, 
as  almost  all  modern  poets,  when  they  interpret 
the  past,  are  unsatisfactory.  A  great  poet  may 
look  into  his  heart  and  write,  but  with  Tennyson, 
with  Browning,  with  Swinburne,  one  feels  that  very 
often  they  mistake  the  beating  of  their  own  hearts 
for  the  sound  of  the  pulsations  of  the  hearts  of 
others. 

Similarly,  modern  Christians  who  claim  to  be 
orthodox  are  sometimes  shocked  when  they  are 
told  that  Saint  Peter,  for  example,  did  not  believe 
that  a  man  might  not  be  both  circumcised  and 
baptized.  According  to  a  common  belief,  the  two 
could  not  exist  together  among  the  converted 
Jews.  And  the  modern  man  of  letters  seems  to 
think  that  paganism  and  Christianity  were  at 
odds  at  all  points.  A  deeper  knowledge  of  the 
manifestations  of  religion,  before  the  Reformation, 
would  dissipate  an  illusion  which  spoils  so  much 
fine  modern  poetry. 

Another  point,  in  applying  my  canons  of  criti- 
cism to  poets  whom  I  love  in  spite  of  this  defect, 
is  that  I  find  that  they  have  no  desire  to  be  united 
with  God — you  may  call  him  Jehovah,  Jove,  or 
Lord,  to  quote  Pope.     They  are,  as  a  rule,  without 


132  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

mysticism  and  constantly  without  that  ecstasy 
which  makes  Southwell,  Crashaw,  and  the  greatest 
of  all  the  mystical  poets  writing  in  English,  Francis 
Thompson,  so  satisfactory. 

Wordsworth  may  have  been  transcendental,  as 
Emerson  certainly  was,  but  in  different  ways  they 
made  their  search  for  the  Absolute,  and  the  search, 
especially  in  Wordsworth's  case,  was  fervent. 
Neither  had  the  splendours,  the  ecstasies  of  that 
love  that  casteth  out  fear,  the  almost  fierce  and 
violent  fervour  of  desire,  reflected  from  the  Apoca- 
lypse of  Saint  John  and  the  poems  of  Saint  Teresa 
and  of  Saint  John  of  the  Cross,  which  we  find  in 
Francis  Thompson.  In  this  respect,  all  modern 
poets  pale  before  him.  He  sees  life  as  a  glory  as 
Baudelaire  saw  it  as  a  corpse.  After  a  reading  of 
"The  Hound  of  Heaven,"  with  its  glorious  colour, 
its  glow,  its  flame,  all  other  modern  poets  seem  to 
me  to  be  a  pale  mauve  by  comparison  to  its  flaming 
gold  and  crimson. 

To  many  of  my  friends  who  love  modern  poets 
each  in  his  degree,  this  seems  unreasonable  and 
even  incomprehensible;  but  to  me  it  is  very  real; 
and  all  literature  which  assumes  to  treat  our  lives 
as  if  Christianity  did  not  exist  lacks   that   satis- 


POETS  AND  POETRY  133 

factory  quality  which  one  finds  in  Dante,  in  Cal- 
deron,  in  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  in  Shakespeare.  It 
is  possible  that  the  prevalence  of  doubt  in  modern 
poetry  is  the  cause  of  its  lack  of  gaiety.  There  is 
a  modern  belief  that  gaiety  went  out  of  fashion 
when  Pan  died  or  disappeared  into  hidden  haunts. 
This  is  not  true.  The  Greeks  were  gay  at  times 
and  joyous  at  times,  but  if  their  philosophers  rep- 
resent them,  joyousness  and  gaiety  were  not  es- 
sential points  of  their  lives. 

The  highest  cultivation  of  its  time  could  not 
save  Athens  from  despondency  and  destruction, 
and  when  the  leaders  in  the  city  of  Rome  came  to 
believe  so  little  in  life  that  only  the  proletariat  had 
children,  it  was  evident  that  their  very  tolerant 
system  of  adopting  any  god  that  pleased  them  did 
not  add  to  the  joy  of  life.  The  poet,  then,  who 
misunderstands  the  paganism  of  the  Greeks,  who 
does  not  desire  to  be  united  to  an  absolute  Per- 
fection, who  is  sad  by  profession,  cannot  be,  ac- 
cording to  my  canons,  a  true  poet.  I  speak,  not  as 
a  critic,  but  as  a  man  who  loves  only  the  poetry 
that  appeals  to  him. 


CHAPTER  III 

Certain  Novelists 

My  friendship  with  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
was  an  evolution  rather  than  a  discovery.  Once 
having  read  "Vanity  Fair"  or  "Nicholas 
Nickleby,"  the  book  became  not  so  much  a  book 
but  a  state  of  mind — and,  as  is  sometimes  felt 
about  a  friend — it  is  hard  to  remember  a  time 
when  we  did  not  know  him ! 

Mark  Twain  was  a  discovery.  "The  Jumping 
Frog  of  Calavaras"  and  that  chuckling  scene  in 
"Innocents  Abroad,"  where  the  unhappy  Italian 
guide  introduces  Christopher  Columbus  to  the 
American  travellers,  were  joys  indeed.  These  were 
more  delightful  and  satisfying  than  the  kind  of 
humour  that  preceded  them — they  seemed  better 
than  the  whimsicalities  of  Artemus  Ward,  and  not 
to  be  compared  to  the  laboured  humour  of  Mrs. 
Partington.  But,  leaving  out  these  amusing  pas- 
sages, my  pleasure  in  the  works  of  Mark  Twain 
faded  more  and  more  as  I  came  to  the  age  of  rea- 

134 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  135 

son,  which  is  somewhat  over  twenty -five.  It  was 
hard  to  laugh  at  Mark  after  a  time.  Compared 
to  him,  the  "Pickwick  Papers"  had  an  infinite 
variety.  There  were  other  things  in  Dickens 
which  were  finer  than  anything  in  "Pickwick," 
but  the  humour  of  Pickwick  had  a  softness  about 
it,  a  human  interest,  a  lack  of  coarseness,  which 
placed  it  immeasurably  above  that  of  Mark  Twain. 

The  greatest  failure  of  Dickens  was  "A  Tale 
of  Two  Cities."  And  the  greatest  failure  of  Mark 
Twain  is  his  "Joan  of  Arc."  But  Dickens  re- 
deemed himself  in  a  hundred  ways,  while  Mark 
Twain  sank  deeper  and  deeper  into  coarseness  and 
pessimism.  As  Mark  Twain  is  by  all  odds  ap- 
parently the  national  American  author,  it  is  heresy 
to  say  this;  and  I  know  persons  who  have  assumed 
an  air  of  coldness  as  long  as  they  could  in  my 
presence,  because  I  declined  to  look  on  "Joan  of 
Arc"  as  a  masterpiece. 

It  shows  some  faults  of  Mark  Twain's  philosophy 
of  life,  it  suggests  his  narrow  and  materialistic 
point  of  view,  and  makes  plain  his  lack  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  perspectives  of  history.  It  is  all  the 
worse  for  an  appearance  of  tenderness.  Mark 
Twain  was  neither  mystical  nor  spiritual.     That 


136  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

does  not  mean  that  he  was  not  a  good  husband  and 
father,  a  kind  friend  and  a  man  very  loyal  to  all 
his  engagements.  There  are  many  other  authors 
who  had  not  all  these  qualities,  but  who  would 
have  more  easily  understood  the  character  of  Joan 
than  did  Mark  Twain. 

Dickens's  failure  in  "A  Tale  of  Two  Cities"  was 
from  very  different  causes.  It  was  not  through  a 
failure  of  tenderness,  a  lack  of  an  understanding 
of  the  real  pathos  of  life,  or  through  the  want  of  a 
spirituality  without  which  no  great  work  can  be 
effective.  It  was  because  Dickens  relied  very 
largely  on  Carlyle  for  the  foundation  of  his  study 
of  the  historical  atmosphere  of  that  novel — the 
best,  from  the  point  of  view  of  style,  except 
"Barnaby  Rudge,"  that  he  ever  wrote,  probably 
due  to  the  fact  that,  treading  as  he  did  on  ground 
that  was  new  to  him,  he  had  to  guide  his  steps  very 
carefully.  The  novel  is  nevertheless  a  failure  be- 
cause it  is  untrue;  it  concerns  itself  with  a  France 
that  never  existed  seen  through  as  artificial  a 
medium  as  the  mauve  tints  through  which  certain 
artists  see  their  figures  and  landscapes.  It  was 
not  with  Dickens  a  case  of  defect  in  vision,  but  a 
lack  of  knowledge.     It  was  not  lack  of  perception 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  137 

or  the  absence  of  a  great  power  of  feeling.  It  was 
pure  ignorance.  He  was  without  that  training 
which  would  have  enabled  him  to  go  intelligently 
to  the  sources  of  French  history. 

In  Mark  Twain's  case  it  was  not  a  lack  of  the 
power  to  reach  the  sources;  it  was  an  inability  to 
understand  the  character  of  the  woman  whom  he 
reverenced,  so  far  as  he  could  feel  reverence,  and 
an  invincible  ignorance  of  the  character  of  her 
time.  Mark  Twain  was  modern;  but  modern  in 
the  vulgarest  way.  I  know  that  "Huckleberry 
Finn"  and  the  other  young  Americans — whom 
our  youth  are  expected  to  like,  if  not  to  imitate — 
are  looked  on  as  sacred  by  the  guardians  of  those 
libraries  who  recommend  typical  books  to  eager 
juvenile  readers.  But  let  that  pass  for  the  mo- 
ment. To  take  a  case  in  point,  there  is  hardly  any 
man  or  woman  of  refinement  who  will  hold  a  brief 
in  defense  of  the  vulgarity  of  "A  Connecticut 
Yankee  at  the  Court  of  King  Arthur." 

It  may  be  said  that  the  average  reader  of  Mark 
Twain's  books — that  is,  the  average  American 
reader — for  Mark  Twain  is  read  the  world  over — 
cares  nothing  for  his  philosophy  of  life.  The 
average  American  reads  Mark  Twain  only  to  be 


138  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

amused,  or  to  recall  the  adventures  of  a  time  not 
far  away  when  we  were  less  sophisticated.  Still, 
whether  my  compatriots  are  in  the  habit  of  looking 
into  books  for  a  philosophy  or  not,  or  of  considering 
the  faiths  or  unfaiths  of  the  writer  in  hand,  it 
does  not  follow  that  it  is  to  their  credit  if  they 
neglect  an  analysis  which  cultivated  readers  in 
other  countries  seldom  omit. 

If  I  thought  that  any  words  of  mine  would  de- 
prive anybody  of  the  gaiety  which  Mark  Twain 
has  added  to  life,  I  should  not  write  these  words; 
but  as  this  little  volume  is  a  book  of  impressions, 
and  sincere  impressions,  I  may  be  frank  in  the  full 
understanding  that  the  average  American  reader 
will  not  take  seriously  what  I  say  of  Mark  Twain, 
since  he  has  become  an  integral  part  of  American 
literature.  There  may  perhaps  come  a  time  when 
his  works  will  be  sold  in  sets,  carefully  arranged  on 
all  self-respecting  bookshelves,  pointed  to  with 
pride  as  a  proof  of  culture,  and  never  read.  They 
will  perhaps  one  day  be  the  Rogers's  statuettes  of 
literature.  But  that  day  is  evidently  far  off.  I 
do  not  think  that  any  jester  of  the  older  day — the 
day  of  Touchstone  or  of  Rigoletto,  with  a  rooted 
sorrow  in  his  heart,  could  have  been  more  pessi- 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  139 

liiistic  and  more  hopeless  than  Mark  Twain.  To 
change  the  words  of  Autolycus — "For  the  life  to 
come,  I  jest  out  the  thought  of  it!" 

"You  who  admire  Don  Quixote,"  said  an  in- 
furiated Mark  Twainite,  "should  not  talk  of 
coarseness.  There  are  pages  in  that  romance  of 
Cervantes  which  I  would  not  allow  my  son  or 
daughter  to  read." 

One  should  give  both  sides  of  an  argument,  and 
I  give  this  other  side  to  show  what  may  be  said 
against  my  views.  But  the  coarseness  of  Cer- 
vantes is,  after  all,  a  healthy  coarseness.  Modern 
ideas  of  purity  were  not  his.  Ignorance  in  those 
days — the  days  of  Cervantes — did  not  mean  in- 
nocence. Even  the  fathers  of  the  Church  were 
quite  willing  to  admit  that  the  roots  of  water 
lilies  were  in  the  mud,  and  there  was  no  con- 
spiracy to  conceal  the  existence  of  the  mud. 
Mark  Twain's  coarseness,  however,  is  more  than 
that  of  Cervantes  or  Shakespeare.  Neither  Cer- 
vantes nor  Shakespeare  is  ever  irreverent. 

To  them,  even  the  ordinary  things  of  life  have 
a  certain  sacerdotal  quality;  but  Mark  Twain 
abhorred  the  sacerdotal  quality  as  nature  abhors 
a  vacuum.     To  say  that  he  has  affected  the  Amer- 


140  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

ican  spirit  or  the  American  heart  would  be  to  go 
too  far — for  Americans  are  irreverent  only  on  the 
surface.  It  seems  to  me  that  they  are  the  most 
reverent  people  in  the  world  toward  those  essen- 
tial qualities  which  make  up  the  spiritual  parts  of 
life.  Curiously  enough,  however,  Mark  Twain  is 
just  at  present  the  one  author  to  whom  all  Europe 
and  all  outlanders  point  as  the  great  typical 
American  writer! 

That  a  delightful  kind  of  American  humour  may 
exist  without  exaggeration,  or  the  necessity  of 
debasing  the  moral  currency,  many  joyous  books 
in  our  literature  show.  There  are  a  few,  of  course, 
that  are  joyous  without  self -consciousness ;  but  for 
real  joyousness  and  charm  and  innocent  gaiety, 
united  to  a  knowledge  of  the  psychology  of  the 
American  youth,  none  so  far  has  equalled  Booth 
Tarkington's  "Penrod,"  or,  what  is  better,  "Seven- 
teen." 

Now  nobody  has  yet  done  anything  so  delight- 
ful, so  mirth  provoking,  so  pathetic,  in  a  way,  as 
"Seventeen."  In  my  youth  I  was  deprived  of 
the  knowledge  of  this  book,  for  when  I  swam  into 
the  tide  of  literature,  Booth  Tarkington  was  in 
that  world  from  which  Wordsworth's  boy  came, 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  141 

bringing  rainbows,  which  moved  to  all  the  music 
of  the  spheres.  It  was  during  the  late  war  that 
"Seventeen"  was  cast  on  the  coasts  of  Denmark, 
at  a  time  when  American  books  scarcely  reached 
those  coasts  at  all.  St.  Julian,  the  patron  of  merry 
travellers,  must  have  guided  it  through  the  maze 
and  labyrinths  Of  bombs  and  submarines  in  the 
North  Sea.  It  arrived  just  when  the  world  seemed 
altogether  upside  down;  when  death  was  the  only 
real  thing  in  life,  and  pain  as  much  a  part  of  the 
daily  routine  as  the  sunshine,  and  when  joy  seemed 
to  have  been  inexplicably  crushed  from  the  earth, 
because  sorrow  was  ever  so  recurrent  that  it  could 
not  be  forgotten  for  a  moment.  Then  "Seven- 
teen" arrived. 

Booth  Tarkington  may  have  his  ups  and  downs 
in  future,  as  he  has  had  in  the  past.  "The  Gentle- 
man from  Indiana"  seemed  to  me  to  be  almost  one 
of  the  most  tiresome  books  ever  invented,  while 
"Monsieur  Beaucaire"  was  one  of  the  most  fas- 
cinating, charming.  You  can  hardly  find  a  better 
novel  of  American  life  than  "The  Turmoil,"  unless 
it  is  Judge  Grant's  "Unleavened  Bread." 

But  the  best  novels  of  American  life  seem  to  be 
written    in    order    to    be    forgotten.     Who    reads 


142  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

"The  Breadwinners"  now?  Or  who,  except  the 
professional  "teacher"  of  literature,  recalls  "Prue 
and  I"?  Or  that  succession  of  Mrs.  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe's  novels,  almost  unequalled  as  pic- 
tures of  a  section  of  our  life,  each  of  which  better 
expresses  her  talent  than  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"? 
The  English  and  the  French  have  longer  memo- 
ries. Mrs.  Oliphant's  "Chronicles  of  Carling- 
ford" — some  of  us  remember  "Miss  Majoribanks" 
or  "Phoebe  Junior" — finds  a  slowly  decreasing 
circle  of  readers.  And  while  "Sapho"  is  almost 
forgotten,  "Les  Rois  en  Exile"  and  "Jack"  are 
still  parts  of  current  French  literature.  But 
"Unleavened  Bread"  or  "The  Damnation  of 
Theron  Ware"  or  "Elsie  Venner"  or  the  "Saxe 
Holm's  Stories"  are  so  much  of  the  past  as  to  be 
unread. 

To  the  credit  of  the  gentle  reader,  Miss  Alcott's 
stories  perennially  bloom.  And,  for  some  strange 
reason,  the  weird  "Elsie  Dinsmore"  series  is  found 
under  the  popular  Christmas  tree,  while  nobody 
gives  the  Rollo  books  to  anybody.  Why?  One 
may  begin  to  believe  that  that  degeneracy  which 
the  prevalence  of  jazz,  lip-sticks,  and  ballet  cos- 
tumes adapted  to  the  subway  is  supposed  to  in- 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  143 

dicate,  is  a  real  menace  when  one  discovers  that 
"Penrod"  or  "Seventeen"  has  ceased  to  be  read! 

We  may  read  Mark  Twain  and  wallow  in  vul- 
garity, but  it  is  my  belief  that  Sodom  and  Gomor- 
rah would  have  escaped  their  fate,  if  a  Carnegie  of 
that  time  had  made  it  possible  to  keep  books  like 
"Penrod"  and  "Seventeen"  in  general  circulation! 

It  was  once  said  of  Anthony  Trollope  that  as 
long  as  English  men  and  women  of  the  upper  and 
middle  classes  continued  to  exist,  he  might  go  on 
writing  novels  with  ever-increasing  zest.  And 
the  same  thing  might  be  said  of  Booth  Tarkington 
in  relation  to  his  unique  chronicles  of  youth — that 
is,  the  youth  of  the  Middle  West,  with  a  universal 
Soul.  His  types  are  American,  but  there  are 
Americas  and  Americas.  Usage  permits  us  to  use 
a  term  for  our  part  of  the  continent  to  which  our 
Canadian  and  South  and  Central  Americans  and 
Mexicans  might  reasonably  object;  but  while  the 
young  Americans  of  Booth  Tarkington  are  typi- 
cally American,  they  personally  could  belong  only 
to  the  Middle  West.  The  hero  of  "Seventeen" 
would  not  be  the  same  boy  if  he  had  been  born  in 
Philadelphia  or  New  York  or  Boston.  Circum- 
stances   would    have    made    him    different.     The 


144  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

consciousness  of  class  distinction  would  have  made 
him  old  before  his  time;  and  though  he  might  be 
just  as  amusing — he  would  not  have  been  amusing 
quite  in  the  same  way. 

And  this  is  one  of  the  fine  qualities  of  Mr. 
Tarkington's  imaginative  synthesis.  He  is  in- 
dividual and  of  his  own  soil;  he  knows  very  well 
that  it  is  unnecessary  to  exaggerate  or  even  to 
invent;  he  has  only  to  perceive  with  those  rare 
gifts  of  perception  which  he  possesses.  It  all 
seems  so  easy  until  you  try  to  do  it  yourself! 

The  state  of  mind  of  Penrod,  when  he  is  being 
prepared  for  the  pageant  of  the  "Table  Round,"  is 
inexpressibly  amusing  to  the  adult  reader;  but  no 
child  can  look  on  it  as  entirely  amusing,  because 
every  child  has  suffered  more  or  less,  as  Penrod 
suffered,  from  the  unexplainable  hardness  of  heart 
and  dullness  of  mind  of  older  people.  Something 
or  other  prevents  the  most  persecuted  boy  from 
admitting  that  his  parents  are  bad  parents  because 
they  force  impositions  which  tear  all  the  fibres  of 
his  soul  and  make  him  helpless  before  a  jeering 
world.  When  Penrod  has  gone  through  horrors, 
which  are  nameless  because  they  seem  to  be  so 
unreasonable,  he  murmurs  aloud,  "  Well,  hasn't  this 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  145 

been  a  day  !  "  Because  of  the  humour  in  "  Penrod  " 
there  is  a  pathos  as  true  and  real  as  those  parts  in 
the  "Pickwick  Papers"  where  fortunately  Dickens 
is  pathetic  in  a  real  sense  because  he  did  not  strive 
for  pathos.  Everybody  admits  now  that  Dickens 
becomes  almost  repellent  when  he  wilfully  tries 
to  be  pathetic. 

One  could  pick  out  of  "Seventeen"  a  score  of  de- 
lightful situations  which  seem  to  ripple  from  the 
pen  of  Booth  Tarkington,  one  of  the  best  being  the 
scene  between  the  hero  and  his  mother  when  that 
esprit  terrible,  his  sister,  seems  to  stand  between 
him  and  the  lady  of  his  thoughts.  And  "Penrod" 
is  full  of  them.  The  description  of  that  young 
gallant's  entrance  into  society  is  of  Mr.  Tarking- 
ton's  best.  Penrod  is  expected  to  find,  according 
to  the  rules  of  dancing  academies,  a  partner  for  the 
cotillion.  It  is  his  duty  to  call  on  the  only  young 
lady  unengaged,  who  was  Miss  Rennsdale,  aged 
eight.     Penrod,  carefully  tutored,  makes  his  call. 

A  decorous  maid  conducted  the  long-belated  applicant  to 
her  where  she  sat  upon  a  sofa  beside  a  nursery  governess. 
The  decorous  maid  announced  him  composedly  as  he  made 
his  entrance. 

"Mr.  Penrod  Schofield!" 

Miss  Rennsdale  suddenly  burst  into  loud  sobs. 


146  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

"  Oh ! "  she  wailed.     "  I  just  knew  it  would  be  him ! " 

The  decorous  maid's  composure  vanished  at  once — like- 
wise her  decorum.  She  clapped  her  hand  over  her  mouth 
and  fled,  uttering  sounds.  The  governess,  however,  set 
herself  to  comfort  her  heartbroken  charge,  and  presently 
succeeded  in  restoring  Miss  Rennsdale  to  a  semblance  of 
that  poise  with  which  a  lady  receives  callers  and  accepts 
invitations  to  dance  cotillons.  But  she  continued  to  sob 
at  intervals. 

Feeling  himself  at  perhaps  a  disadvantage,  Penrod  made 
offer  of  his  hand  for  the  morrow  with  a  little  embarrassment. 
Following  the  form  prescribed  by  Professor  Bartet,  he  ad- 
vanced several  paces  toward  the  stricken  lady  and  bowed 
formally. 

"I  hope,"  he  said  by  rote,  "you're  well,  and  your  parents 
also  in  good  health.  May  I  have  the  pleasure  of  dancing 
the  cotillon  as  your  partner  t'-morrow  afternoon?" 

The  wet  eyes  of  Miss  Rennsdale  searched  his  countenance 
without  pleasure,  and  a  shudder  wrung  her  small  shoulders; 
but  the  governess  whispered  to  her  instructively,  and  she 
made  a  great  effort. 

"  I  thu-thank  you  f u-f or  your  polite  invu-invu-invutation ; 

and   I   ac "     Thus   far   she   progressed   when   emotion 

overcame  her  again.  She  beat  frantically  upon  the  sofa  with 
fists  and  heels.     "Oh,  I  did  want  it  to  be  Georgie  Bassett!" 

"No,  no,  no!"  said  the  governess,  and  whispered  urgently, 
whereupon  Miss  Rennsdale  was  able  to  complete  her  ac- 
ceptance. 

"And  I  ac-accept  wu-with  pu-pleasure ! "  she  moaned,  and 
immediately,  uttering  a  loud  yell,  flung  herself  face  downward 
upon  the  sofa,  clutching  her  governess  convulsively. 

Somewhat  disconcerted,  Penrod  bowed  again. 

"I  thank  you  for  your  polite  acceptance,"  he  murmured 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  147 

hurriedly;  "and  I  trust— I  trust— I  forget.  Oh,  yes— I 
trust  we  shall  have  a  most  enjoyable  occasion.  Pray  pre- 
sent my  compliments  to  your  parents;  and  I  must  now  wish 
you  a  very  good  afternoon." 

Concluding  these  courtly  demonstrations  with  another 
bow  he  withdrew  in  fair  order,  though  thrown  into  partial 
confusion  in  the  hall  by  a  final  wail  from  his  crushed  hostess: 

"Oh!    Why  couldn't  it  be  anybody  but  him!" 

Dickens  would  not  have  done  the  scene  quite 
this  way;  he  could  not  have  so  conceived  it,  and  he 
might  have  overdone  it,  but  Booth  Tarkington 
gets  it  just  right.  He  has  created  boy  characters 
which  will  live  because  they  are  alive.  One  of  the 
most  detestable  books,  after  Mark  Twain's  "Yan- 
kee at  the  Court  of  King  Arthur,"  is  Dickens's 
"Child's  History  of  England."  The  two  books 
have  various  gross  faults  in  common  and  these 
faults  are  due  to  colossal  ignorance.  Mr.  Gilbert 
Chesterton  says  that  one  of  Dickens's  is  due  to 

the  application  of  a  plain  rule  of  right  and  wrong  to  all  cir- 
cumstances to  which  it  was  applied.  It  is  not  that  they 
wrongly  enforce  the  fixed  principle  that  life  should  be  saved; 
it  is  that  they  take  a  fire-engine  to  a  shipwreck  and  a  life- 
boat to  a  house  on  fire.  The  business  of  a  good  man  in 
Dickens's  time  was  to  bring  justice  up  to  date.  The  busi- 
ness of  a  good  man  in  Dunstan's  time  was  to  toil  to  ensure 
the  survival  of  any  justice  at  all. 


148   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  all  the  works  of  Dickens 
were  lost  we  might  do  very  well  with  the  "Pick- 
wick Papers"  and  "Nicholas  Nickleby."  To 
these,  one  is  tempted  to  add  "Our  Mutual  Friend." 

When  I  was  young  enough  to  assist  at  meetings 
of  Literary  Societies,  where  papers  on  Dickens 
were  read,  I  was  invariably  informed  that  "  Charles 
Dickens  could  not  paint  a  lady  or  a  gentleman." 
There  was  no  reason  given  for  this  censure.  It 
was  presumed  that  the  authors  of  the  papers  meant 
an  English  lady  or  gentleman.  Nobody,  to  my 
knowledge,  ever  defined  what  an  English  gentleman 
or  lady  was.  When  one  considers  that  for  a  long 
period  an  English  gentleman's  status  was  deter- 
mined by  the  fact  that  he  owned  land,  had  not 
even  a  remote  connection  with  "trade"  or  that 
he  was  instructed  at  Eton  or  Harrow,  in  Oxford 
or  Cambridge,  the  more  modern  definition  would 
have  been  very  different  from  what  the  English 
of  the  olden  time  would  have  called  a  gentleman. 
Even  now,  when  a  levelling  education  has  rather 
blurred  the  surface  marks  of  class  in  England,  it 
might  be  difficult  for  an  American  to  define  what 
was  meant  by  this  criticism  of  Dickens.  It  seems 
to  me  that  no  one  could  define  exactly  what  was 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  149 

meant.  The  convention  that  makes  the  poet  in 
Pennsylvania  write  as  if  the  banks  of  the  Wis- 
sahickon  were  peopled  by  thrushes,  or  orchestrated 
by  the  mavis,  or  the  soaring  lark,  causes  him  often 
to  borrow  words  from  the  English  vocabulary  of 
England  without  analyzing  their  exact  meaning. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Don  Quixote  was  a 
gentleman  but  not  exactly  in  the  English  con- 
ventional sense.  And,  if  he  was  a  gentleman,  why 
are  not  Mr.  Pickwick  and  Sam  Weller  gentlemen? 
An  interesting  thesis  might  be  written  on  the 
application  of  Cardinal  Newman's  definition  of  a 
gentleman  to  both  Mr.  Pickwick  and  Sam  Weller. 
Why  not? 

There  is  a  truth  about  the  English  people,  at 
least  the  lower  classes,  which  Mr.  Chesterton  in 
his  illuminating  "Appreciations  and  Criticisms  of 
the  Works  of  Charles  Dickens" — one  of  his  best 
books — brings  out,  though  he  does  not  accentuate 
it  sufficiently:  this  is  that  the  lower  classes  of  the 
English  are  both  witty  and  humorous.  Witty  be- 
cause they  are  satirical  and  humorous  because  they 
are  ironical.  Sam  Weller  represents  a  type — a 
common  type — more  exactly  than  Samuel  Lover's 
"Handy  Andy"  or  any  of  Charles  Lever's  Irish 


150   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

characters.  When  one  examines  the  foundation 
for  the  assertion  that  Dickens  could  not  draw  a 
lady  or  a  gentleman,  one  discovers  that  his  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  in  the  English  sense,  are  deadly 
dull.  It  is  very  probable  that  all  conventional 
ladies  and  gentlemen  bored  Dickens,  who  never 
ceased  to  be  a  cockney,  though  he  became  the 
most  sublimated  of  that  class.  Doctor  Johnson 
was  a  cockney,  too,  but,  though  it  may  seem  para- 
doxical to  say  it,  not  so  greatly  impressed  by  class 
distinctions  as  Dickens  was. 

Dickens  had  the  art  of  making  insupportable 
bores  most  interesting.  This  was  an  art  in  which 
the  delicate  Miss  Austen  excelled,  too;  but  Dick- 
ens's methods  compared  to  hers  are  like  those  of  a 
scene  painter  when  compared  to  those  of  an  etcher 
in  colours.  There  are  times  when  Dickens  is  con- 
sciously "common,"  and  then  he  is  almost  un- 
bearable; but  this  objection  cannot  be  made  to  the 
"Pickwick  Papers."  This  book  is  inartistic;  it  is 
made  up  of  unrelated  parts;  the  characters  do  not 
grow;  they  change.  But  all  this  makes  no  dif- 
ference. They  are  spontaneous.  You  feel  that 
for  once  Dickens  is  doing  the  thing  he  likes  to  do — 
and  all  the  world  loves  a  lover  who  loves  his  work. 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  151 

There  are  doubtless  some  people  still  living  who 
can  tolerate  the  romantic  quality  in  "Nicholas 
Nickleby."  There  are  no  really  romantic  quali- 
ties in  the  "Pickwick  Papers" — thank  heaven! — 
no  stick  of  a  hero,  no  weeping  willow  of  a  heroine. 
The  heroic  sticks  of  Dickens  never  bloom  suddenly 
as  the  branch  in  "Tannhauser"  bloomed.  Even 
Dickens  can  work  no  miracle  there. 

It  increases  our  admiration  of  him  to  examine 
the  works  of  those  gentlemen  who  are  set  down  in 
the  textbooks  of  literature  as  his  predecessors. 
Some  of  these  learned  authors  mention  Sterne's 
"Tristram  Shandy,"  a  very  dull  and  tiresome 
narrative;  and  "Tom  Jones,"  very  tiresome,  too, 
in  spite  of  its  fidelity  to  certain  phases  of  eigh- 
teenth-century life.  And  later,  Pierce  Egan's 
"Tom  and  Jerry."  I  was  brought  up  to  consider 
the  renown  of  the  two  Pierce  Egans  with  rever- 
ence and  permitted  to  read  "Tom  and  Jerry;  or 
The  Adventures  of  Corinthian  Bob"  as  part  of 
the  family  pedigree,  but  it  requires  the  meticulous 
analysis  of  a  German  research-worker  to  find  any 
real  resemblance  between  the  artificial  dissipations 
of  "Tom  and  Jerry"  and  the  adventures  of  the 
peerless  Pickwick. 


152  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

If  the  elder  Pierce  Egan  had  the  power  of  in- 
fluencing disciples,  he  ought  to  have  induced  his 
son  to  produce  something  better  than  "The  Poor 
Boy;  or,  The  Betrayed  Baffled, "  "The  Fair  Lilias, " 
and  others  too  numerous  to  mention. 

The  voracious  reader  of  Dickens,  as  he  grows 
older,  perhaps  becomes  a  student  of  Dickens,  and 
is  surprised  to  find  that  the  development  of 
Dickens  is  much  more  marked  and  easily  noted 
than  the  development  of  Thackeray.  In  fact, 
Thackeray,  like  his  mild  reflector,  Du  Maurier, 
sprang  into  the  public  light  fully  equipped  and 
fully  armed.  Both  these  men  had  wide  experience 
and  a  careful  training  in  form  and  proportion  before 
they  attempted  to  write  seriously.  They  were 
educated  in  art  and  life  and  letters.  The  edu- 
cation of  Dickens,  on  the  other  hand,  was  only 
begun  with  "Pickwick,"  which  knew  neither 
method  nor  proportion;  and  he  who  reads  "Bar- 
naby  Rudge"  for  the  flavour  of  Dickens  finds  a 
new  and  good  perspective  and  proportion,  and 
even  self-restraint.  Artistically,  it  is  the  best  of 
all  Dickens's  novels.  For  that  reason  it  lacks 
that  flavour  which  we  find  in  the  earlier  books. 
I  could  not  get  such  thorough  enjoyment  from  it  as 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  153 

from  "  Nicholas  Nickleby."  In  it  Dickens  sacrificed 
too  much  to  his  self-restraint,  and  there  is  no  mo- 
ment in  it  that  gives  us  the  joy  of  the  discovery  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Vincent  Crummies  or  of  'Tilda  Price. 

Anthony  Trollope,  in  his  "Autobiography," 
which  ought  to  be  a  textbook  in  all  those  practical 
classes  of  literature  that  work  to  turn  out  self- 
supporting  authors,  tells  us  that  the  most  import- 
ant part  of  a  novel  is  the  plot.  This  may  be  true, 
but  the  inefficiency  of  the  plot  in  the  works  of 
Charles  Dickens  may  easily  be  shown  in  an  at- 
tempt to  summarize  any  of  them,  except  "The 
Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood." 

Still,  when  all  is  said  for  Dickens,  one  cannot 
even  in  old  age  begin  to  read  him  over  and  over 
again,  as  one  can  read  Thackeray.  But  who  reads 
an  American  book  over  and  over  again?  Haw- 
thorne never  wearies  the  elect,  and  one  may  go 
back  to  Henry  James,  in  order  to  discover  whether 
one  thinks  that  he  means  the  same  thing  in  1922 
one  thought  he  meant  in  1912.  But  who  makes  it  a 
practice  in  middle  age  to  read  any  novel  of  Mrs. 
Wharton's  or  Mrs.  Deland's  or  Mr.  Marion  Craw- 
ford's or  Mr.  Booth  Tarkington's  at  least  once  a 
year?     There  are  thousands  of  persons  who  find 


154  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

leisure  to  love  Miss  Austen,  that  hardiest  of  hardy 
perennials;  and  during  the  war,  when  life  in  the 
daytime  became  a  nightmare,  there  was  a  large 
group  of  persons  who  read  Trollope  from  end  to 
end!  This  is  almost  incredible;  but  it  is  true. 
And  I  must  confess  that  if  I  do  not  read  Miss 
Austen's  novels  once  every  year,  preferably  cozily 
in  the  winter,  or  "Cranford,"  or  parts  of  Frois- 
sart — whose  chronicle  takes  the  bad  taste  of 
Mark  Twain's  "Joan  of  Arc"  from  my  memory —  I 
feel  as  if  I  had  had  an  ill-spent  year.  It  makes  me 
seem  as  slothful  as  if  I  omitted  a  daily  passage 
from  "The  Following  of  Christ"  or,  at  least,  a 
weekly  chapter  from  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul! 

George  Eliot  I  had  known  even  before  the  time 
I  had  begun  to  read.  No  well-brought-up  child 
could  escape  "Adam  Bede"  and  the  drolleries  of 
Mrs.  Poyser.  As  I  grew  older,  however,  "Ro- 
mola"  attracted  me  most.  The  heroine  is  perhaps 
a  little  too  good  for  human  nature's  daily  food, 
but  she  is  a  great  figure  in  the  picture.  I  suspect 
that  the  artificiality  of  Kingsley's  "Hypatia," 
which  I  read  at  almost  the  same  time,  made  me 
admire,  if  I  did  not  love,  Romola,  by  way  of  con- 
trast.    No    youth    could    ever    love    Romola    as 


CERTAIN  NOVELISTS  155 

Walter  Scott  made  him  love  Mary  Stuart  or 
Catherine  Seton.  But  as  it  happened  that  just 
at  this  time  I  was  labouring  with  Blackstone 
(Judge  Sharswood's  Notes),  with  a  volume  of 
scholastic  philosophy  "on  the  side" — I  think  it 
was  Jourdain's  consomme  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
in  French — Romola  was  a  decided  relief,  and  she 
seemed  truer  and  more  interesting  in  every  way 
than  Hypatia,  who  was  as  papier-mache  as  her 
whole  environment  is  untrue  to  the  history  of  the 
time.  An  historical  novel  ought  not  necessarily 
to  be  true  to  history,  but  it  ought  to  be  illuminating 
and  interesting,  as  "Hypatia"  is  not  and  as 
"Romola"  is.  So  it  makes  no  difference  whether 
George  Eliot's  reading  of  Savonarola  is  correct  or 
not,  though  it  ought  to  be  correct,  of  course. 
Then  there  is  Tito,  the  delicious  and  treacherous 
Tito!  and  the  scene  in  the  barber  shop!  And  if 
you  want  a  good,  mouth-filling  novel,  give  me 
"Middlemarch."  Few  persons  read  it  now,  and 
probably  fewer  will  read  it  in  the  future.  It  is 
nevertheless  a  great  monument  to  the  genius  of  a 
woman  who  had  such  an  infinite  quality  for  taking 
pains,  that  it  almost  defeated  the  end  for  which 
she  worked. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Letters,  Biographies,  and  Memoirs 

Some  of  us  have  acquired  a  state  of  mind  which 
helps  us  to  believe  that  whenever  a  man  mentions 
a  book  he  either  condemns  or  approves  of  it.  In 
a  word,  the  mere  naming  a  book  means  a  criticism 
of  the  book  at  once.  It  is  true  that  books  are 
criticisms  of  life,  and  that  life,  if  it  is  not  very- 
narrow  and  limited,  is  a  good  criticism  of  books; 
but  one  of  the  most  pleasant  qualities  of  a  reader 
who  has  lived  among  books  all  his  life  is  that  he 
does  not  attempt  always  to  recommend  books  to 
others,  or  to  preach  about  them.  Besides,  it  is 
too  dangerous  to  recommend  unreservedly  or  to 
condemn  unreservedly.  The  teachers  of  literature 
have  undertaken  the  recommendation  of  books  for 
the  young;  there  are  schools  of  critics  who  spend 
their  time  in  approving  of  them  for  the  old;  and 
the  "Index"  at  Rome  assumes  the  difficult  task 
of  disapproval  and  condemnation.  That  lets  me 
out,  I  feel. 

156 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  157 

One  of  my  most  cherished  books  is  the  "Letters 
to  People  in  the  World, "  by  Saint  Francis  de  Sales. 
I  have  known  people  who  have  declared  that  it  is 
entirely  exotic  and  has  no  meaning  whatever  for 
them.  For  me,  it  is  a  book  of  edification  and  a 
guide  to  life;  and  the  "Letters"  of  Saint  Francis 
himself,  not  entirely  concerned  with  spiritual 
matters  or  the  relations  of  spiritual  matters  to 
life,  are  to  me  a  constant  source  of  pleasure.  I 
remember  reading  aloud  to  a  friend  the  passage 
in  which  this  charming  Bishop  writes  that,  when 
he  slept  at  his  paternal  chateau,  he  never  allowed 
the  peasants  on  the  domain  to  perform  their  usual 
duty,  which  was  to  stay  up  all  night  and  beat  the 
waters  of  the  ponds,  or  perhaps  of  the  moat,  around 
the  castle,  so  that  the  seigneur  and  his  friends 
might  sleep  peacefully.  My  friend  was  very 
much  bored  and  could  not  see  that  it  represented  a 
social  point  of  view,  which  showed  that  the  Saint 
was  much  ahead  of  his  time!  It  did  not  bring 
old  France  back  to  him;  he  could  not  see  the  old 
chateau  and  the  water  in  the  moonlight,  or  con- 
ceive how  glad  the  peasants  were  to  be  relieved 
of  their  duty.  I  can  read  the  "Letters"  of  Saint 
Francis  de  Sales  over  and  over  again,  as  I  read  the 


158  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

"Letters"  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  or  the  "Me- 
moirs" of  the  Due  de  Saint  Simon. 

I  think  I  first  made  acquaintance  of  Saint 
Simon  in  an  English  translation  by  Bayle  St. 
John.  If  you  have  an  interest  in  interiors — the 
interiors  of  rooms,  of  gardens,  of  palaces — you 
must  like  Saint  Simon.  Most  people  to-day  read 
these  "Memoirs"  in  little  "collections";  but  I 
think  it  is  worth  while  taking  the  trouble  to  learn 
French  in  order  to  become  an  understanding  com- 
panion of  this  malicious  but  very  graphic  author. 
To  me  the  Palace  of  Versailles  would  be  an  empty 
desert  without  the  "Memoirs"  of  Saint  Simon. 
Else,  how  could  anybody  realize  a  picture  of  Made- 
moiselle de  la  Valliere  looking  hopelessly  out  of 
the  window  of  her  little  room  just  before  the  birth 
of  her  child?  Or  what  would  the  chapel  be  with- 
out a  memory  of  those  devout  ladies  who  knelt 
regularly,  holding  candles  to  their  faces,  at  the 
exercises  in  Lent,  after  Louis  XIV.  had  become 
devout,  in  order  that  he  might  see  them? 

But  because  I  love  to  linger  in  the  society  of 
the  Due  de  Saint  Simon  and  Cardinal  de  Retz,  it 
does  not  follow  that  I  mean  to  introduce  modern 
and    ingenuous    youth    to    the    society    of   these 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  159 

gentlemen.  Each  man  has  his  pet  book.  I  still 
retain  a  great  affection  for  a  man  of  my  own  age 
who  gives  on  birthdays  and  great  feasts  copies 
of  "The  Wide,  Wide  World"  and  "Queechy"  to 
his  grandchildren  and  their  friends!  Could  you 
believe  that?  He  dislikes  Miss  Austen's  novels 
and  sneers  at  Miss  Farrar's  "Marriage."  He  has 
never  been  able  to  read  Miss  Edgeworth's  book; 
and  he  considers  Pepys's  "Diary"  an  immoral 
book!  Now,  I  find  it  very  hard  to  exist  without 
at  least  a  weekly  peep  into  Pepys.  And,  by  the 
way,  in  a  number  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  not  so 
long  ago  there  is  a  vivid,  pathetic,  and  excellently 
written  piece  of  literature.  It  is  "A  Portion  of  the 
Diurnal  of  Mrs  Elizth  Pepys"   by  E.  Barrington. 

If  anybody  asks  me  why  I  like  Pepys,  I  do  not 
feel  obliged  to  reply.  I  might  incriminate  myself. 
Very  often,  indeed,  by  answering  a  direct  question 
about  books,  one  does  incriminate  oneself. 

However,  to  return  to  what  I  was  saying — 
while  I  love  the  "Memoirs  of  Cardinal  de  Retz, " 
I  adore — to  be  a  little  extravagant — the  "Letters 
of  Saint  Vincent  de  Paul."  The  man  that  does 
not  know  the  real  story  of  the  life  of  Saint  Vincent 
de  Paul  knows  nothing  of  the  evolution  of  the 


160   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

brotherhood  of  man  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
This  Frenchman  really  fought  with  beasts  for  the 
life  of  children,  and  was  the  only  real  reformer  in 
the  France  of  his  time. 

Now  it  is  not  because  Saint  Vincent  was  for  a 
time  the  preceptor  of  Cardinal  de  Retz  that  I 
find  the  Cardinal  so  delightful !  On  the  contrary ! 
I  enjoy  the  Cardinal,  famous  coadjutor  of  his  uncle, 
the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  because  he  is  a  true  type 
of  the  polite,  the  worldly,  and  the  intriguing  gentle- 
man of  his  time.  He  died  a  good  peaceful  death, 
as  all  the  gay  and  the  gallant  did  at  his  time. 
He  earned  the  deepest  affection  and  respect  of 
Madame  de  Sevigne,  for  which  any  discerning 
man  might  have  been  willing  to  spend  half  a  life- 
time. But  even  that  is  beside  the  point.  He  lives 
for  me  because  he  gives  a  picture  of  the  French 
ruling  classes  of  his  time  which  is  shamelessly  true. 
No  living  man  to-day  in  political  office,  although 
he  might  be  as  great  an  intriguer  as  the  Cardinal, 
would  dare  to  be  so  interestingly  shameless.  That 
is  a  great  charm  in  itself.  And,  then,  if  you  read 
him  in  French,  you  discover  that  he  knew  how 
to  make  literature. 

The  only  wonder  in  my  mind  has  always  been 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  161 

how  a  man  who  became  so  penitent  during  the  last 
years  of  his  life  as  Paul  de  Gondi  should  not  have 
been  forced  by  his  confessor  to  destroy  his  book 
of  revelations.  But  one  must  remember  that 
the  confessors  of  his  period — the  period  of  the 
founding  of  the  French  Academy — had  a  great 
respect  for  mere  literature.  His  father  was  Philip 
Emanuel  de  Gondi,  Count  de  Joigni,  General  of  the 
Gallies  of  France,  and  Knight  of  the  Order  of  the 
Holy  Ghost;  who  retired  in  the  year  1640,  to  live 
among  the  Fathers  of  the  Oratory.  There  he 
entered  into  holy  orders,  and  there  he  died,  with 
the  reputation  of  a  mightily  pious  man,  on  June 
29,  1662,  aged  eighty-one. 

Give  me  leave,  madame  [Cardinal  de  Retz  says}  to  reflect 
a  little  here  upon  the  nature  of  the  mind  of  man.  I  believe 
that  there  was  not  in  the  world  a  man  of  an  uprighter  heart 
than  my  father,  and  I  may  say  that  he  was  stampt  in  the 
very  mold  of  virtue.  Yet  my  duels  and  love-intrigues  did 
not  hinder  the  good  man  from  doing  all  he  could  to  tye  to 
the  Church,  the  soul  in  the  world  perhaps  the  least  ecclesias- 
tical. His  predilection  for  his  eldest  son,  and  the  view  of  the 
archbishoprick  of  Paris  for  me,  were  the  true  causes  of  his 
acting  thus;  though  he  neither  believed  it,  nor  felt  it.  I  dare 
say  that  he  thought,  nay  would  have  sworn,  that  he  was  led 
in  all  this  by  no  other  motive  than  the  spiritual  good  of  my 
soul,  and  the  fear  of  the  danger  to  which  it  might  be  ex- 
posed in  another  profession.     So  true  it  is  that  nothing  is 


162   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

more  subject  to  delusion  than  piety.  All  manner  of  errors 
creep  and  hide  themselves  under  that  vail.  Piety  takes  for 
sacred  all  her  imaginations,  of  what  sort  soever;  but  the  best 
intention  in  the  world  is  not  enough  to  keep  it  in  that  re- 
spect free  from  irregularity.  In  fine,  after  all  that  I  have 
related  I  remained  a  churchman;  but  certainly  I  had  not 
long  continued  so,  if  an  accident  had  not  happened  which 
I  am  now  to  acquaint  you  with. 

This  is  not  at  all  what  is  called  "edifying,"  but, 
from  the  moral  point  of  view,  it  shows  what  Saint 
Vincent  de  Paul  had  to  struggle  against  in  the 
Church  of  France;  and  the  position  of  Paul  de 
Gondi  in  relation  to  an  established  church  was  just 
as  common  in  contemporary  England,  where 
"livings"  were  matters  of  barter  and  sale  but  where 
the  methods  of  the  clergymen  highly  placed  were 
neither  so  intellectual  nor  so  romantic. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  Cardinal  de  Retz,  like 
a  later  French  prelate,  Talleyrand,  made  no  pre- 
tense of  being  fitted  for  the  Church.  Talleyrand's 
only  qualification  was  that  he  was  lame;  and,  as  a 
younger  son,  he  had  to  be  provided  for.  But  Car- 
dinal de  Retz,  with  all  his  faults,  had  a  saving 
grace  in  spite  of  many  unsaving  graces.  He  did 
his  best  to  escape  the  priesthood.  He  fought  his 
first  duel  with  Bassompierre  behind  the  Convent 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  163 

of  the  Minims,  in  the  Bois  de  Vincennes;  but  it 
was  of  no  use.  His  friends  stopped  the  inquiry 
of  the  Attorney  General,  "and  so  I  remained  in 
my  cassock  notwithstanding  my  duel."  His  next 
duel  was  with  Praslin.  He  tried  his  best  to  give  it 
the  utmost  publicity,  but,  he  says,  "there's  no 
use  in  opposing  one's  destiny;  nobody  took  the 
slightest  notice  of  the  scandal." 

The  elder  Dumas  has  probably  had  his  day, 
though  "Monte  Cristo"  and  "The  Three  Muske- 
teers" are  still  read.  The  newer  romance  writers 
are  less  diffuse,  and,  not  writing  feuilletons,  are  not 
forced  to  be  diffuse.  The  constant  reader  of 
French  memoirs  of  the  seventeenth  century  can 
hardly  help  wondering  why  anybody  should  read 
Dumas  who  could  go  directly  to  the  sources  of  his 
romances. 

Speaking  of  the  relation  of  books  to  books,  it 
was  the  "Memoirs"  of  Madame  Campan  that  took 
me  into  the  society  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  There 
were  legends  about  him  in  Philadelphia,  where  we 
thought  we  knew  more  about  this  distinguished 
American  than  anybody  else;  but  it  was  through 
certain  passages  in  the  "Memoirs  on  Marie  Antoin- 
ette and  her  Court"  that  I  turned  to  his  auto- 


164  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

biography,  and  then  to  such  letters  of  his  as  could 
be  found.  That  autobiography  is  one  of  the 
gems  of  American  history,  though  it  does  not  re- 
veal the  whole  man.  If  he  had  been  as  frank  as 
Cardinal  de  Retz,  his  autobiography  would  have 
been  suppressed;  but,  then,  no  Philadelphian  could 
ever  be  quite  frank  in  his  memoirs.  It  has  never 
been  done!  Even  the  seemingly  reckless  James 
Huneker  understood  that  thoroughly.  But  the 
autobiography  of  Benjamin  Franklin  is  suffi- 
ciently frank.  It  is  of  its  own  time,  and  it  seems  to 
me  that  it  should  be  read  just  after  one  has  fin- 
ished for  the  second  or  third  time  the  memoirs  of 
Gouverneur  Morris.  Everybody  feels  it  his  duty 
to  acclaim  the  charm  of  the  confessions  of  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini,  and  I  have  known  a  young  woman 
who  read  them  reverently  in  the  holy  service  of 
culture  as  a  pendant  to  a  textbook  on  the  Renas- 
cence, and  followed  him  by  Jowett's  translation  of 
the  "Republic  of  Plato."  She  may  safely  be  left 
to  her  fate.  The  diaries  of  Gouverneur  Morris 
were  not  in  her  course  of  reading,  and  they  seem 
almost  to  have  been  forgotten.  I  do  not  recom- 
mend them  to  anybody.  There  are  passages  in 
them  which  might  shock  the  Prohibitionist,  and 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  165 

also  those  persons  who  believe  in  divorce  a  la  mode 
de  Madame  de  Stael. 

For  me,  they  are  not  only  constantly  amusing, 
constantly  instructive,  but  they  give  the  best  pic- 
tures of  Parisian  interiors  of  the  time  before  and 
during  the  French  Revolution.  Because  I  am  firmly 
convinced  of  this,  is  it  necessary  that  I  should  be 
expected  to  place  them  among  the  Best  One  Hun- 
dred Books?  To  me  they  will  be  always  among 
my  best  twenty-five  books. 

In  the  first  place  Gouverneur  Morris  knew  well 
how  to  serve  his  country  efficiently;  and  he  was  too 
sensible  of  the  debt  of  that  country  to  France  and 
too  sympathetic  with  the  essential  genius  of  the 
French  people  not  to  do  his  best  to  serve  her,  too. 
The  original  verses  in  his  memoirs  are  the  worst 
things  in  the  volumes;  but  then,  everybody  has  the 
faults  of  his  virtues,  and  nearly  everybody  wrote 
verses  at  that  time.  He  was  one  of  the  wisest  of 
all  our  diplomatists.  He  was  broad  minded,  culti- 
vated, plastic  within  reasonable  limits,  and  not 
corroded  with  a  venom  of  partisan  politics.  I  re- 
peat, with  a  polite  anticipation  of  contradiction,  that 
no  better  picture  has  ever  been  given  of  the  aristo- 
cratic society  of  the  late  eighteenth  century  in  Paris. 


166  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

His  gallantries  are  amusing;  yet  there  is  under- 
neath his  affectation  of  the  frivolous  vice  of  the 
time,  which  might  be  euphemistically  called  "exag- 
gerated chivalry,  a  fundamental  morality  which 
one  does  not  find  in  that  class  of  systematic  roues" 
who  were  astonished  at  the  virtue  of  the  ladies  at 
Newport  when  the  Count  de  Lauzun  and  his  friends 
dwelt  in  that  town.  There  may  be  dull  pages  in 
these  memoirs,  but  if  so  I  have  not  yet  found 
them. 

In  "The  Diary  and  Letters"  there  are  many 
bits  of  gossip  about  certain  great  persons,  notably 
about  Talleyrand,  who  got  rid  of  his  mitre  as  soon 
as  he  could,  and  Madame  de  Flahaut.  It  seems  to 
me  that  Talleyrand  and  Philippe  Egalite  were  the 
most  fascinating  characters  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, for  the  same  reason  perhaps  that  moved  a 
small  boy  who  was  listening  to  a  particular^  dull 
history  of  the  New  Testament  to  exclaim  sud- 
denly, "Oh,  skip  about  the  other  apostles;  read  to 
me  about  Judas!" 

To  persons  who  might  censure  Gouverneur 
Morris's  frankness  one  may  quote  a  short  passage 
from  Boswell's  "Johnson."  "To  discover  such 
weakness,"  said  Mrs.  Thrale  to  Doctor  Johnson, 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  167 

speaking  of  the  autobiography  of  Sir  Robert  Sib- 
bald,  "exposes  a  man  when  he  is  gone."  "Nay," 
said  the  pious  and  great  lexicographer,  "it  is  an 
honest  picture  of  human  nature." 

This,  then,  excuses  the  clever  and  wise  Gouver- 
neur  Morris  for  enlightening  us  as  to  the  paternity 
of  a  son  of  Madame  de  Flahaut.  Morris,  for  a 
time  that  condoned  the  amourettes  of  Benjamin 
Franklin,  was  virtuous.  Madame  de  Flahaut, 
afterward  Madame  de  Souza,  gave  Morris  a  hint 
that  he  might  easily  supplant  Talleyrand  in  her 
affection.  "I  may,  if  I  please,  wean  her  from  all  re- 
gard toward  him,  but  he  is  the  father  of  her  child, 
and  it  would  be  unjust."  In  this  noble  moment 
Mr.  Morris  chivalrously  forgets  the  existence  of  the 
Count  de  Flahaut! 

In  1789,  Mr.  Morris  continues  to  write  platonic 
verses  to  Madame  de  Flahaut;  the  Queen's  circle 
at  Versailles  is  worried  about  the  fidelity  of  the 
troops;  the  Count  d'Artois  holds  high  revelry  in 
the  Orangery;  De  Launey's  head  is  carried  on  a 
pipe  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  and  murdered  men  lie 
in  the  gutters.  But  the  fashionable  life  of  Paris  is 
not  disturbed.  Mr.  Morris  goes  to  dinner.  He  is 
invited  for  three  o'clock,  to  the  house  of  Madame 


168  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

la  Comtesse  de  Beauharnais.  Toward  five  o'clock 
the  Countess  herself  came  to  announce  dinner. 
Morris  is  happy  in  the  belief  that  his  hunger  will  be 
equal  to  the  delayed  feast.  For  this  day,  he  thinks 
he  will  be  free  from  his  enemy,  indigestion.  He 
is  corroborated  in  his  opinion  that  Madame  de 
Beauharnais  is  a  poetess  by 

a  very  narrow  escape  from  some  rancid  butter  of  which  the 
cook  had  been  very  liberal. 

But  this  is  froth,  and  yet  indicative  of  the  depth 
beneath.  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  no  more 
interesting  and  useful  book  on  the  French  Revolu- 
tion than  this  autobiography.  It  ought  to  be  placed 
near  De  Tocqueville's  "Ancient  Regime"  and 
"Democracy  in  America." 

On  December  2,  1800,  he  believed  it  to  be  the 
general  opinion  that  Mr.  Jefferson  was  considered 
a  demagogue,  and  that  Aaron  Burr  would  be  chosen 
President  by  the  House  of  Representatives.  The 
gentlemen  of  the  House  of  Representatives  be- 
lieved that  Burr  was  vigorous,  energetic,  just,  and 
generous,  and  that  Mr.  Jefferson  was  "afflicted 
with  all  the  cold-blooded  vices,  and  particularly 
dangerous    from    false    principles    of    government 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  169 

which  he  had  imbibed."  Virginia  would  be,  of 
course,    against    Burr,    because,    Morris    writes, 

Virginia  can  not  bear  to  see  any  other  than  a  Virginian  in 
the  President's  chair! 

John  Adams  was  President  and  Thomas  Jefferson 
vice-President,  in  1800.  It  is  edifying  for  us  who 
look  on  the  "demigods"  of  1787  with  profound  rev- 
erence, to  see  them  at  close  range  in  Gouverneur 
Morris's  pages. 

Washington  fares  well  at  his  hands,  Lafayette 
not  nearly  so  well : 

one  could  not  expect  the  blast  of  a  trumpet  from  a  whistle. 

But,  then,  Morris  had  had  money  transactions 
with  the  Lafayettes.  Morris  believed  that  no  man 
ever  existed  who  controlled  himself  so  well  as 
Washington.  Shall  we  put  the  "Diary"  just  after 
the  "Autobiography  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  not 
far  from  Beveridge's  "Marshall"  and  at  least  on 
the  same  shelf  with  the  perennial  Boswell? 

I  read  the  confessions  of  Cardinal  de  Retz  and 
of  Gouverneur  Morris  many  times  with  a  dip  now 
and  then,  by  way  of  a  change,  into  the  Autobi- 
ography of  Anthony  Trollope.  This  is  rather  a 
change  from  the  kickshaws  of  France  to  the  roast 


170  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

beef  of  old  England.  This  autobiography  never 
seems  to  me  to  be  merely  a  book  made  to  encourage 
authors  to  be  industrious  and  hard-working.  It 
is  more  than  that.  It  is  the  expression  of  the  life 
of  an  unusual  man,  who  did  an  unusual  thing,  and 
who  writes  about  himself  so  well  and  so  sin- 
cerely that  he  gives  us  an  insight  into  a  phase  of 
English  character  which  none  of  his  novels  ever 
elaborated. 

What  Trollope  did  may  be  done  again,  but  hardly 
in  the  American  atmosphere,  with  the  restless 
American  nerves  and  that  lack  of  doggedness  which 
characterizes  us.  The  picture  Trollope  gives  of 
himself  as  a  member  of  the  English  gentry,  deprived 
of  all  the  advantages  of  his  caste  except  an  inborn 
class  feeling,  is  worth  while,  and  the  absence  of 
self-pity  is  at  once  brave  and  pathetic.  He  knew 
very  well  what  he  wanted,  and  he  secured  it  by  the 
most  honest  and  direct  means.  He  knew  he  could 
get  nothing  without  work,  and  he  worked.  His 
exercise  of  literature  as  an  avocation  did  not  pre- 
vent him  from  being  a  good  public  servant. 

As  a  typical  Englishman  brought  up  in  the  coun- 
try, he  liked  to  hunt.  Hunting  is  a  prerogative  of 
the  leisurely  and  the  rich.     He  obtained  leisure  at 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  171 

a  great  sacrifice,  and  he  became  fairly  rich  through 
the  same  sacrifice.  He  tells  us  of  all  this  with  a 
manliness  and  lack  of  sentimentalism  which  en- 
dears this  book  to  me.  It  is  so  much  the  fashion 
in  our  day  to  declare  that  society  is  against  us  when 
we  have  to  work  unremittingly  for  what  we  want, 
that  Trollope's  honesty  is  refreshing,  and,  though 
most  readers  will  consider  the  word  rather  absurd 
as  applied  to  him — inspiring! 

In  earlier  days  every  American  was  brought  up 
with  a  prejudice  against  Mrs.  Trollope's  "  Domestic 
Manners  of  the  Americans,"  as  we  were  all  taught 
to  hate  "American  Notes,"  by  Dickens.  We  all 
softened  toward  Dickens  later,  and  it  would  be 
difficult  to  read  the  simply  told  story  of  the  heroic 
devotion  and  courage  which  Trollope  relates  of  his 
mother  without  believing  that  the  recording  angel 
in  no  way  holds  her  responsible  for  her  rather 
vulgar  book. 

How  fascinating  to  the  budding  author  is  the 
record  of  sales  of  the  books  written  by  Trollope  as 
he  ascended  the  ladder  of  popularity!  How  he 
managed  to  cajole  the  publishers  in  the  beginning 
he  does  not  tell  us.  They  are  not  so  easily  man- 
aged now.     And  there  is  the  story  of  the  pious 


172  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

editor  who  began  the  serial  publication  of  "Ra- 
chel Ray,"  and  although  paying  Trollope  his  hon- 
orarium, stopped  it  abruptly  because  there  was  a 
dancing  party  in  the  story !  In  all  this  the  author 
of  "The  Warden"  and  "Barchester  Towers" 
nothing  extenuates  nor  puts  down  aught  in  malice. 
And  I  must  say  that  for  me  this  autobiography 
is  very  good  reading.  As  the  sailor  once  said  of  a 
piece  of  rather  solid  beef,  "There's  a  great  deal 
of  chaw  in  it." 

I  pause  a  moment  to  reflect  on  a  letter  which  I 
have  just  received  from  a  young  college  woman 
who  has  so  far  read  the  manuscript  of  this  book. 
She  writes  that  it  is  really  not  a  book  so  far  for 
professing  Christians. 


My  mother  and  I  had  expected  of  you  something  more 
edifying,  something  that  would  lead  us  to  the  reading  of 
good  and  elevating  books.  At  college  I  looked  on  literature 
as  something  apart.  Since  I  have  come  home  to  Georgia, 
I  find  that  it  is  better  for  me  to  submit  myself  to  the  direction 
of  our  good  Baptist  clergyman,  and  have  no  books  on  our 
library  shelves  that  I  cannot  read  aloud  to  the  young.  One 
of  your  favourites,  Madame  de  Sevigne,  shocks  me  by  the 
cruelty  of  her  description  of  the  death  of  the  famous  poisoner, 
Madame  de  Brinvilliers.  And  I  do  not  think  that  the  pages 
of  the  Due  de  Saint-Simon  should  be  read  by  young  people. 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  173 

This  is  an  example  of  what  a  refined  atmos- 
phere may  do  to  a  Georgia  girl!  I  have  written 
to  her  by  way  of  an  apology  that  this  is  a  little 
volume  of  impressions  and  confessions,  and  that 
personally  I  should  find  life  rather  duller  if  I  had 
not  the  Due  de  Saint-Simon  at  hand.  Besides, 
I  do  not  think  that  there  is  a  single  young  person 
of  my  acquaintance  who  would  allow  me  to  read 
any  of  his  pages  to  him  or  her! 

Most  young  persons  prefer  "Main  Street"  or 
any  other  novel  that  happens  to  be  the  vogue. 
As  I  have  said,  I  do  not  agree  with  Madame  de 
Sevigne  when  she  says,  writing  of  her  grand- 
daughter, that  bad  books  ought  to  be  preferred  to 
no  books  at  all.  But  it  would  be  almost  better 
for  the  young  not  to  begin  to  read  until  they  are 
old,  if  one  is  to  gauge  the  value  of  books  by  the  un- 
fledged taste  of  youth.  Purity,  after  all,  is  not 
ignorance,  though  a  certain  amount  of  ignorance 
at  a  certain  age  is  very  desirable. 

While  I  write  this,  I  have  in  mind  a  little  essay 
of  great  charm  and  value  by  Coventry  Patmore  on 
"Modern  Ideas  of  Purity,"  which  goes  deeper 
into  the  fundamentals  of  morality  than  any  other 
modern  work  on  the  subject.     And,  by  the  way, 


174  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

having  read  "The  Age  of  Innocence,"  "Main 
Street,"  "Moon  Calf,"  "Miss  Lulu  Bett,"  and 
several  other  novels,  I  turn  from  their  lack  of 
gaiety  to  find  a  reason  why  art  should  not  be 
gloomy,  and  here  it  is,  from  Coventry  Patmore's 
"Cheerfulness  in  Life  and  Art." 

"Rejoice  always:  and  again  I  say,  Rejoice,"  says  one  of  the 
highest  authorities;  and  a  poet  who  is  scarcely  less  infallible 
in  psychological  science  writes,  "A  cheerful  heart  is  what 
the  Muses  love." 

Dante  shows  Melancholy  dismally  punished  in  Purgatory; 
though  his  own  interior  gaiety — of  which  a  word  by  and  by 
— is  so  interior,  and  its  outward  aspect  often  so  grim,  that 
he  is  vulgarly  considered  to  have  himself  been  a  sinner  in 
this  sort.  Good  art  is  nothing  but  a  representation  of  life; 
and  that  the  good  are  gay  is  a  commonplace,  and  one  which, 
strange  to  say,  is  as  generally  disbelieved  as  it  is,  when 
rightly  understood,  undeniably  true.  The  good  and  brave 
heart  is  always  gay  in  this  sense:  that,  although  it  may  be 
afflicted  and  oppressed  by  its  own  misfortunes  and  those  of 
others,  it  refuses  in  the  darkest  moment  to  consent  to  de- 
spondency; and  thus  a  habit  of  mind  is  formed  which  can 
discern  in  most  of  its  own  afflictions  some  cause  for  grave 
rejoicing,  and  can  thence  infer  at  least  a  probability  of  such 
cause  in  cases  where  it  cannot  be  discerned.  Regarding  thus 
cheerfully  and  hopefully  its  own  sorrows,  it  is  not  over- 
troubled  by  those  of  others,  however  tender  and  helpful  its 
sympathies  may  be.  It  is  impossible  to  weep  much  for  that 
in  others  which  we  should  smile  at  in  ourselves;  and  when  we 
see  a  soul  writhing  like  a  worm  under  what  seems  to  us  a 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  175 

small  misfortune,  our  pity  for  its  misery  is  much  mitigated 
by  contempt  for  its  cowardice. 

There  may  be  gaiety  and  joy  in  the  novels  of 
Harold  Bell  Wright  and  Mrs.  Gene  Stratton-Porter, 
but  it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  cheerfulness  which  is 
not  quite  the  real  thing.  It  is  too  sentimental 
and  rather  too  laboured.  These  two  authors, 
who,  if  the  value  of  a  writer  could  really  depend 
on  the  majority  of  the  votes  cast  for  him,  would, 
with  the  goldenrod,  be  our  national  flowers,  seem 
to  work  too  hard  in  the  pursuit  of  cheerful- 
ness. 

Once  I  remember  asking  a  scornful  Englishman 
what  supported  the  pleasant  town  of  Stratford- 
on-Avon.  He  replied  at  once,  "The  Shakespearian 
industry!"  Now  the  cheerfulness  of  both  Mr. 
Harold  Bell  Wright  and  Mrs.  Gene  Stratton-Porter, 
like  the  cheerfulness  of  "Pollyanna,"  seems  to  be 
very  much  of  an  industry.  It  is  not  at  all  like 
the  joyousness,  that  delight  in  life,  spontaneous 
and  unconscious,  which  one  finds  in  the  really  great 
authors.  Why  the  modern  realist  should  believe 
that  to  be  real  he  must  be  joyless — in  the  United 
States,  at  least — is  perhaps  because  he  feels  the 
public    need    of    protest    against    the    optimistic 


176   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

sentimentalism  of  the  Harold  Bell  Wrights  and 
the  Gene  Stratton-Porters.  But  it  would  be  a 
serious  mistake  to  assume  that  neither  Mr.  Wright 
nor  Mrs.  Porter  has  a  gleam  of  value.  It  is  just 
as  serious  a  mistake  as  to  assume  that  the  late 
Mary  Jane  Holmes  and  Mrs.  E.  D.  E.  N.  South- 
worth  had  no  value.  They  pleased  exactly  the 
same  class  of  people,  in  their  day,  which  delights 
in  Mr.  Wright  and  Mrs.  Porter  in  ours.  They 
answered  to  the  demand  of  a  public  that  is  moral 
and  religious,  that  needs  to  be  taken  into  coun- 
tries which  savoured  something  of  Fairyland,  and 
yet  which  are  framed  by  reality.  However,  as 
long  as  Mrs.  Gene  Stratton-Porter  and  Mr.  Harold 
Bell  Wright,  and  novelists  of  higher  philosophical 
aspirations,  like  the  author  of  "The  Age  of  Inno- 
cence," and  "Blind  Mice,"  and  "Zell,"  and  "Main 
Street,"  continue  to  write,  there  is  no  danger  that 
the  general  crowd  of  American  readers  will  be 
shocked  or  corrupted  by  the  "Memoirs"  of  the 
Due  de  Saint-Simon  or  of  the  Comtesse  de  Boigne. 
So  I  feel  that  I  am  absolved  from  the  responsibility 
of  misleading  any  young  reader  to  sup  on  the 
horrors  of  the  description  of  the  death  of  Ma- 
dame de  Brinvilliers  as  painted  by  Madame  de 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  177 

Sevigne  or  to  revel  among  the  groups  of  Italians 
who  range  through  the  scenes  drawn  by  Benvenuto 
Cellini. 

While  Pepys  is  always  near  at  hand,  I  treat  his 
contemporary,  Evelyn,  with  very  distant  polite- 
ness and  respect.  Now  Evelyn  should  not  be 
treated  in  that  way.  He  is  always  so  edifying  and 
so  very  correct,  except  when  he  moralizes  about 
the  Church  of  Rome,  that  he  ought  to  be  read 
nearly  every  day  by  the  serious  as  an  example  of 
propriety  and  as  a  model  of  the  expression  of  the 
finest  sentiments  on  morals,  philosophy,  literature, 
and  art.  But  I  do  not  find  in  his  "Diary"  any 
such  passages  as  this,  which  Pepys  writes  on 
October  19,  1662  (Lord's  day): 

Put  on  my  first  new  lace-band:  and  so  neat  it  is,  that  I 
am  resolved  my  great  expense  shall  be  lace-bands,  and  it 
will  set  off  anything  else  the  more.  I  am  sorry  to  hear  that 
the  news  of  the  selling  of  Dunkirk  is  taken  so  generally  ill, 
as  I  find  it  is  among  the  merchants;  and  other  things,  as 
removal  of  officers  at  Court,  good  for  worse;  and  all  things 
else  made  much  worse  in  their  report  among  people  than 
they  are.  And  this  night,  I  know  not  upon  what  ground, 
the  gates  of  the  City  ordered  to  be  all  shut,  and  double 
guards  everywhere.  Indeed  I  do  find  everybody's  spirit 
very  full  of  trouble :  and  the  things  of  the  Court  and  Council 
very  ill  taken;  so  as  to  be  apt  to  appear  in  bad  colours,  if 


178   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

there  should  ever  be  a  beginning  of  trouble,  which  God 
forbid ! 

Or, 

29th  (Lord's  day). 

This  morning  I  put  on  my  best  black  cloth  suit,  trimmed 
with  scarlet  ribbon,  very  neat,  with  my  cloak  lined  with 
velvet,  and  a  new  beaver,  which  altogether  is  very  noble, 
with  my  black  silk  knit  canons  I  bought  a  month  ago. 

Evelyn  never  condescends  to  such  weaknesses 
as  we  find  in  our  beloved  Pepys ! 

One  wonders  whether,  if  the  noble  Mr.  Evelyn 
had  been  able  to  decipher  some  of  the  hidden 
things  in  Mr.  Pepys's  "Diary,"  he  would  have 
written  this  tribute,  under  the  date  of  May  26, 
1703: 

This  day  died  Mr.  Sam  Pepys,  a  very  worthy,  industrious 
and  curious  person.  .  .  .  He  lived  at  Clapham  with 
his  partner,  Mr.  Hewer,  formerly  his  clerk,  in  a  very  noble 
house  and  sweete  place,  where  he  enjoyed  the  fruite  of  his 
labours  in  greate  prosperity.  He  was  universally  belov'd, 
hospitable,  generous,  learned  in  many  things,  skill'd  in 
music,  a  very  greate  cherisher  of  learned  men  of  whom  he 
had  the  conversation.  His  library  and  collection  of  other 
curiosities  were  of  the  most  considerable,  the  models  of 
ships  especially.  .  .  .  Mr.  Pepys  had  been  for  neere  40 
years  so  much  my  particular  friend,  that  Mr.  Jackson  sent 
me  compleat  mourning,  desiring  me  to  be  one  to  hold  up  the 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  179 

pall  at  his  magnificent  obsequies,  but  my  indisposition  hin- 
dered me  from  doing  him  this  last  office. 

All  the  teachings  of  the  histories  of  our  student 
days  force  us  to  look  on  Charles  II.  as  one  of  the 
weakest  of  English  kings;  but  when  we  come  to 
enjoy  Pepys  and  to  revere  Evelyn,  we  begin  to 
see  that  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  him  as  a 
monarch,  and  that  he  did  more  for  England  under 
difficult  circumstances  than  conventional  history 
has  given  him  credit  for. 

It  took  many  years  for  me  to  find  any  diary  or 
memoir  that  appealed  to  me  as  much  as  that  of 
Pepys.  His  great  charm  is  that  he  does  for  you 
what  formal  history  never  does;  he  takes  you  into 
the  heart  of  his  time,  and  introduces  you  into  the 
centre  of  his  mind  and  heart.  In  literature,  in 
poetry  and  prose,  the  reader  hopes  that  the  roofs 
of  houses  or  the  tops  of  heads  might  be  taken  off, 
so  that  we  could  see  with  an  understanding  eye 
what  goes  on.  The  interest  of  the  human  race, 
though  it  may  be  disguised  rhetorically,  is  the 
interest  that  everybody  finds  in  gossip.  Malicious 
gossip  is  one  thing;  but  that  gossip  that  makes  us 
know  our  fellow  men  and  women  somewhat  as 
we    know    ourselves — but    perhaps    more    clearly 


180  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

— can  never  be  rooted  out  of  normal  human 
nature. 

I  read  and  re-read  favourite  parts  of  Pepys's 
"Diary"  many  times,  and  I  sat  myself  down  in 
many  cozy  corners,  on  hills,  on  valleys,  by  land, 
and  by  sea,  to  dip  into  the  "Memoirs  of  Saint- 
Simon";  and  then  there  was  always  Madame  de 
Sevigne.  Much  was  hoped  from  the  long-prom- 
ised "Memoirs  of  Talleyrand."  They  came;  they 
were  disappointing. 

Suddenly  arrived  a  very  complete  and  egoistical 
book  that  compares  in  a  way  with  the  perennial 
favourites  of  mine  I  have  been  writing  about. 
And  this  is  "The  Education  of  Henry  Adams," 
and  almost  contemporaneously  the  "Letters  of 
William  James."  It  is  easy  to  understand  the 
delight  with  which  intelligent  people  welcomed 
"The  Education  of  Henry  Adams."  Uncon- 
sciously to  most  of  us,  it  showed  elaborately  what 
we  talked  about  in  our  graduation  essays  and  what 
we  believed  in  a  vague  way — that  education  con- 
sists in  putting  value  on  the  circumstances  of  life, 
and  regarding  each  circumstance  as  a  step  either 
forward  or  backward  in  one's  educational  progress. 
This   is   the  lesson    which  young  Americans    are 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  181 

taught  by  Harold  Bell  Wright  and  Gene  Stratton- 
Porter;  and  which  Samuel  Smiles  beat  into  the 
heads  of  the  English.  Henry  Adams's  lesson, 
however,  is  not  taught  in  the  same  way  at  all. 
There  is  no  preaching;  it  is  a  series  of  pictures, 
painted  by  a  gentleman,  with  a  sure  hand,  who 
looks  on  the  phenomena  of  life  as  no  other  American 
has  ever  looked  on  them,  or,  at  least,  as  no  other 
American  has  ever  expressed  them.  The  judicious 
and  the  sensitive  and  the  nicely  discerning  may 
shrink  with  horror  from  me  when  I  say  that  I  put 
at  once  "The  Education  of  Henry  Adams,"  for 
my  delectation,  beside  the  "Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua" 
of  Cardinal  Newman! 

There  is  the  same  delicate  egoism  in  both;  there 
is  the  same  reasonable  and  well-bred  reticence. 
There  is  one  great  difference,  however;  while 
Cardinal  Newman  ardently  longs  for  truth  and  is 
determined  to  find  it,  Henry  Adams  seems  not 
quite  sure  whether  truth  is  worth  searching  for  or 
not.  And  yet  Henry  Adams  is  more  human, 
more  interesting  than  Cardinal  Newman,  for, 
while  Newman  is  almost  purely  intellectual  and 
so  much  above  the  reach  of  most  of  us,  Adams  is 
merely  intelligent — but  intelligent  enough  to  dis- 


182  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

cern  the  richness  of  life,  and  mystical  enough  to 
long  for  a  religious  key  to  its  meaning.  Newman 
not  only  longs,  but  reasons  and  acts.  It  was  not 
the  definition  of  the  unity  of  God  that  troubled 
Adams.  It  was  the  question  of  His  personality. 
The  existence  of  pain  and  wretchedness  in  the 
world  was  a  bar  to  his  understanding  that  a  per- 
sonal Christ  should  be  equal  in  divinity  with  God, 
in  fact,  God  Himself. 

Newman,  who  was  more  spiritual,  saw  that  pain 
was  no  barrier  to  faith  in  a  personal  God.  I  am 
speaking  now  only  from  my  own  point  of  view; 
others  who  like  to  read  both  Newman  and  Adams 
may  look  on  this  view  as  entirely  negligible. 
What  other  American  than  Adams  would  have 
so  loved  without  understanding  the  spirit  of  Saint 
Francis  d'Assisi: 

Vast  swarms  of  Americans  knew  the  Civil  War  only  by 
school  history,  as  they  knew  the  story  of  Cromwell  or  Cicero, 
and  were  as  familiar  with  political  assassination  as  though 
they  had  lived  under  Nero.  The  climax  of  empire  could 
be  seen  approaching,  year  after  year,  as  though  Sulla  were 
a  President  or  McKinley  a  Consul. 

Nothing  annoyed  America  more  than  to  be  told  this 
simple  and  obvious — in  no  way  unpleasant — truth;  therefore 
one  sat  silent  as  ever  on  the  Capitol;  but,  by  way  of  com- 
pleting the  lesson,  the  Lodges  added  a  pilgrimage  to  Assisi 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  183 

and  an  interview  with  St.  Francis,  whose  solution  of  histor- 
ical riddles  seemed  the  most  satisfactory — or  sufficient — 
ever  offered;  worth  fully  forty  y ears'  more  study,  and  better 
worth  it  than  Gibbon  himself,  or  even  St.  Augustine,  St. 
Ambrose,  or  St.  Jerome.  The  most  bewildering  effect  of 
all  these  fresh  crosslights  on  the  old  Assistant  Professor  of 
1874  was  due  to  the  astonishing  contrast  between  what  he 
had  taught  them  and  what  he  found  himself  confusedly  try- 
ing to  learn  five-and-twenty  years  afterwards — between  the 
twelfth  century  of  his  thirtieth  and  that  of  his  sixtieth  years. 
At  Harvard  College,  weary  of  spirit  in  the  wastes  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  law,  he  had  occasionally  given  way  to  outbursts  of 
derision  at  shedding  his  life-blood  for  the  sublime  truths  of 
Sac  and  Soc : — 

Hie  Jacet 

Homunculus  Scriptor 

Doctor  Barbaricus 

Henricus  Adams 

Adae  Filius  et  Evae 

Primo  Explicuit 

Socnam 

The  Latin  was  as  twelfth  century  as  the  law,  and  he 
meant  as  satire  the  claim  that  he  had  been  first  to  explain 
the  legal  meaning  of  Sac  and  Soc,  although  any  German 
professor  would  have  scorned  it  as  a  shameless  and  presump- 
tuous bid  for  immortality;  but  the  whole  point  of  view  had 
vanished  in  1900.  Not  he,  but  Sir  Henry  Maine  and  Ru- 
dolph Sohm,  were  the  parents  or  creators  of  Sac  and  Soc. 
Convinced  that  the  clue  of  religion  led  to  nothing,  and  that 
politics  led  to  chaos,  one  had  turned  to  the  law,  as  one's 
scholars  turned  to  the  Law  School,  because  one  could  see  no 
other  path  to  a  profession. 


184   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

The  law  had  proved  as  futile  as  politics  or  religion,  or  any 
other  single  thread  spun  by  the  human  spider;  it  offered  no 
more  continuity  than  architecture  or  coinage,  and  no  more 
force  of  its  own.  St.  Francis  expressed  supreme  contempt 
for  them  all,  and  solved  the  whole  problem  by  rejecting  it 
altogether.  Adams  returned  to  Paris  with  a  broken  and 
contrite  spirit,  prepared  to  admit  that  his  life  had  no  mean- 
ing, and  conscious  that  in  any  case  it  no  longer  mattered. 

After  all,  the  speculations  of  Henry  Adams,  his 
thrusts  at  philosophy,  seem  as  futile  as  those  of 
that  very  great  American  John  Burroughs.  It  is 
the  facts  of  life  as  seen  through  his  personality, 
the  changes  in  our  political  history  as  analyzed  so 
skilfully  by  him  after  the  manner  of  no  other  man 
that  make  his  book  supremely  interesting. 

The  real  man  is  not  hidden  in  "The  Education 
of  Henry  Adams."  We  can  no  longer  talk  of  the 
degeneracy  of  American  literary  taste  when  we 
know  that  this  very  American,  characteristic,  and 
illuminating  book  was  a  "best  seller"  in  our 
country  for  several  months.  Some  who  like  to 
bewail  the  degeneracy  of  our  art  and  literature  and 
of  our  drama,  declare  that  its  popularity  is  simply 
due  to  a  fashion.  Biographies  are  the  fashion,  and 
therefore  it  is  the  transitory  habit  of  the  illiterate 
book  buyer  to  purchase,  if  he  does  not  read,  biog- 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  185 

rapliies.  This  view  may  be  dismissed  with  a 
scornful  wave  of  the  hand. 

When  I  took  up  "The  Education  of  Henry 
Adams,"  I  was  informed  that  it  was  "pathetic." 
Personally,  it  has  never  struck  me  that  Henry 
Adams,  as  far  as  I  know  him,  is  at  all  pathetic.  He 
did  not  assume  an  air  of  pathos  when  he  read  my 
review  in  Scribne/s  Monthly — before  it  became  the 
Century — of  the  novel  "Democracy."  Mr.  Rich- 
ard Watson  Gilder,  the  editor,  was  away  at  the 
time,  and  I  recall  his  whimsical  horror  when  on 
his  return  he  read  the  things  I  had  said  about  a 
novel,  which  I,  in  the  heat  of  youth,  held  to  be  en- 
tirely un-American. 

Mr.  Henry  Adams's  book,  in  my  opinion,  has  no 
element  of  pathos.  Adams  lived  a  rare  and  inter- 
esting life.  He  loved  beauty,  and  was  so  pre- 
pared by  tradition  and  education  that  he  knew 
how  to  appreciate  beauty  wherever  he  found  it, 
and  to  give  reasons  for  its  being  beautiful.  Against 
the  rough  material  obstacles  in  life,  which  are 
supposed  to  be  good  for  a  man,  but  are  not  at  all 
good,  since  they  absorb  a  great  deal  of  energy 
that  is  subtracted  from  his  later  life,  he  was  not 
obliged   to   struggle.     Like   Theodore   Roosevelt, 


186   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

the  greatest  of  all  modern  Americans,  who  was  a 
man  of  letters  in  love  with  life,  Adams  was  not 
compelled  to  look  up  to  social  strata  above  him, 
and,  whatever  the  enraged  democrats  may  say, 
this  in  itself  is  a  great  advantage.  One  can  see 
from  his  "Education"  that  his  material  difficulties 
were  so  slight  that  he  could  take  them  cheerfully, 
even  in  our  world  where  poverty  is  both  a  blunder 
and  a  crime.  This  in  itself  tends  toward  happiness. 
Henry  Adams,  it  is  true,  suffered  terribly  in  his 
heart.  His  description  of  the  death  of  his  sister  is 
heart-rending;  he  does  not  dwell  on  the  worst  of  his 
griefs.  No  man  had  a  more  agreeable  circle  of 
friends,  no  man  more  pleasant  surrounding.  He 
was  free  in  a  way  that  few  other  men  are  free,  and 
to  my  mind  it  is  this  sense  of  freedom,  of  which  he 
does  not  always  take  advantage,  that  is  one  of 
the  most  appealing  qualities  of  his  book.  It  is  a 
great  relief  to  meet  a  man  and  to  be  intimate  with 
him,  as  we  are  with  Henry  Adams,  who  has  the 
power  of  using  wings,  whether  he  uses  them  or  not. 
There  are  many  reasons  for  the  success  of  his 
book.  The  chapters  on  "Diplomacy,"  on  "Friends 
and  Foes,"  on  "Political  Morality,"  and  on  "The 
Battle  of  the  Rams"  are  new  contributions  to  our 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  187 

history.  More  than  that,  they  elucidate  condi- 
tions of  mind  which  are  generally  wrapped  up,  for 
motives  of  policy,  in  misty  and  often  hypocritical 
verbiage. 

Some  of  the  reviewers  found  "The  Education*' 
egotistical.  This  is  too  strong  a  term.  These 
memoirs  would  have  no  value  if  they  were  not 
egotistical;  and  if  the  term  "egotistical"  implies 
conceit  or  self-complacency  or  the  desire  to  show 
one's  better  side  to  the  public,  "The  Education" 
does  not  deserve  it.  A  man  cannot  write  about 
himself  without  writing  about  himself.  This  seems 
very  much  like  a  platitude.  And  Henry  Adams 
writes  about  himself  with  no  affectation  of  modesty. 
If  anything,  he  underrates  himself,  as  in  conver- 
sation he  sometimes  took  a  tone  which  made  him 
appear  to  those  who  knew  him  slightly  as  below 
the  average  of  the  real  Henry  Adams. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  a  good  passage : 

Swinburne  tested  him  [Henry  Adams]  then  and  there  by 
one  of  his  favourite  tests — Victor  Hugo;  for  to  him  the  test 
of  Victor  Hugo  was  the  surest  and  quickest  of  standards. 
French  poetry  is  at  best  a  severe  exercise  for  foreigners;  it 
requires  extraordinary  knowledge  of  the  language  and  rare 
refinement  of  ear  to  appreciate  even  the  recitation  of  French 
verse;  but  unless  a  poet  has  both,  he  lacks  something  of 


188   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

poetry.  Adams  had  neither.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he 
never  listened  to  a  French  recitation  with  pleasure,  or  felt 
a  sense  of  majesty  in  French  verse;  but  he  did  not  care  to 
proclaim  his  weakness,  and  he  tried  to  evade  Swinburne's 
vehement  insistence  by  parading  an  affection  for  Alfred  de 
Musset.  Swinburne  would  have  none  of  it;  De  Musset  was 
unequal;  he  did  not  sustain  himself  on  the  wing. 

Adams  would  have  given  a  world  or  two,  if  he  owned  one, 
to  sustain  himself  on  the  wing  like  De  Musset,  or  even  like 
Hugo;  but  his  education  as  well  as  his  ear  was  at  fault,  and 
he  succumbed.  Swinburne  tried  him  again  on  Walter  Savage 
Landor.  In  truth  the  test  was  the  same,  for  Swinburne  ad- 
mired in  Landor 's  English  the  qualities  that  he  felt  in  Hugo's 
French;  and  Adams's  failure  was  equally  gross,  for,  when 
forced  to  despair,  he  had  to  admit  that  both  Hugo  and  Landor 
bored  him.  Nothing  more  was  needed.  One  who  could 
feel  neither  Hugo  nor  Landor  was  lost. 

The  sentence  was  just  and  Adams  never  appealed  from  it. 
He  knew  his  inferiority  in  taste  as  he  might  know  it  in  smell. 
Keenly  mortified  by  the  dullness  of  his  senses  and  instincts, 
he  knew  he  was  no  companion  for  Swinburne;  probably  he 
could  be  only  an  annoyance;  no  number  of  centuries  could 
ever  educate  him  to  Swinburne's  level,  even  in  technical 
appreciation;  yet  he  often  wondered  whether  there  was 
nothing  he  had  to  offer  that  was  worth  the  poet's  acceptance. 
Certainly  such  mild  homage  as  the  American  insect  would 
have  been  only  too  happy  to  bring,  had  he  known  how,  was 
hardly  worth  the  acceptance  of  any  one.  Only  in  France 
is  the  attitude  of  prayer  possible;  in  England  it  became 
absurd.  Even  Monckton  Milnes,  who  felt  the  splendours  of 
Hugo  and  Landor,  was  almost  as  helpless  as  an  American 
private  secretary  in  personal  contact  with  them.  Ten 
years  afterwards  Adams  met  him  at  the  Geneva  Conference, 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  189 

fresh  from  Paris,  bubbling  with  delight  at  a  call  he  had  made 
on  Hugo;  "I  was  shown  into  a  large  room,"  he  said,  "with 
women  and  men  seated  in  chairs  against  the  walls,  and 
Hugo  at  one  end  throned.  No  one  spoke.  At  last  Hugo 
raised  his  voice  solemnly,  and  uttered  the  words:  "Quant  a 
moi,  je  crois  en  Dieu!"  Silence  followed.  Then  a  woman 
responded  as  if  in  deep  meditation:  "Chose  sublime!  un 
Dieu  qui  croit  en  Dieu!" 


The  Chose  sublime  is  an  Adamesque  touch!  It 
gives  the  last  delicate  tint  to  the  impression. 
Page  after  page  gleams  with  such  impressions  and 
such  touches.  He  looks  deep,  and  he  sees  clearly. 
But  he  lacks  faith!  He  is  the  discoverer  of  the 
twelfth  century;  and,  in  a  lesser  sense,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  real  meaning  of  the  nineteenth.  He 
perceived  the  real  architecture  of  both  the  Cathed- 
ral of  Chartres  and  of  "The  Song  of  Roland." 
How  useless  all  the  tomes  of  the  learned  Teutons 
seem  in  comparison  with  his  volume  on  Chartres, 
and  their  conclusions  are  so  laboured  and  inef- 
fective in  comparison  with  the  lightning-like 
glance  with  which  he  pierces  the  real  meaning  of 
the  twelfth  century.  He  has  his  limitations,  and 
he  is  not  unaware  of  them.  But  when  one  re- 
flects on  the  hideous  self-complacency,  the  eigh- 
teenth-century ignorance,  the  half-educated  vul- 


190   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

garity  of  most  of  the  writers  in  German  and 
English  who  pretend  to  interpret  the  Middle  Ages, 
one  cannot  help  giving  grateful  thanks  for  having 
found  Henry  Adams. 

To  be  sure,  he  does  not  respect  Harvard,  and  one 
of  his  reasons  seems  to  be  that  the  Harvard  man, 
though  capable  of  valuing  the  military  architec- 
ture of  the  walls  of  Constantinople,  cannot  sym- 
pathize with  the  beauties  of  Chartres  or  Sancta 
Sophia.  Yale,  he  assumes,  is  more  receptive. 
However,  Henry  Adams,  if  he  were  alive  to-day, 
would  have  discovered  that  both  Yale  and  Har- 
vard, both  seekers  after  culture  and  the  culti- 
vated, the  hitherto  prejudiced  and  self-opinion- 
ated, have  profited  greatly  by  the  education  he 
has  given  them.  It  seems  that  Henry  Adams 
fancied  that  he  had  failed  as  an  educator.  He  did 
not  realize  that  he  would  give  his  countrymen  an 
education  which  they  greatly  lacked,  and  which 
many  of  them  are  sincerely  grateful  for. 

The  man  that  cannot  read  his  chapter  on  "Ec- 
centricity" over  and  over  again  is  incapable  of  ap- 
preciating some  of  Pepys's  best  passages!  Books 
to  be  read  and  re-read  ought  to  occupy  only  a  small 
space  on  any  shelf,  and  not  many  of  them,  in  my 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  191 

opinion,  are  among  the  One  Hundred  Best  Books 
listed  by  the  late  Sir  John  Lubbock.  Each  of  us 
will  make  his  own  shelf  of  books.  The  book  for 
me  is  the  book  that  delights,  attracts,  soothes,  or 
uplifts  me.  Let  those  critics  go  hang  whose  crit- 
icisms are  not  literature!  Sainte-Beuve  makes 
literature  when  he  exercises  his  critical  vocation; 
Brunetiere  has  too  heavy  a  hand;  Francisque 
Sarcey  has  some  touches  of  inspiration  that  give 
delight.  There  are  no  really  good  French  critics 
to-day,  probably  because  they  have  so  little  ma- 
terial to  work  on.  Our  own  Mencken,  with  all  his 
vagaries,  is  worth  while,  and  Brander  Matthews 
knows  his  line  and  the  value  of  background  and 
perspective;  William  Lyon  Phelps  has  a  light  hand; 
but  there  are  many  leaves  in  our  forests  of  critical 
writing  and  not  much  wood.  Literary  criticism 
is  becoming  a  lost  art  with  our  English  brethren, 
who  once  claimed  Saintsbury  and  George  Lewes. 
The  admitted  existence  of  cliques  and  claques 
in  London  makes  us  distrustful.  You  were  work- 
ed into  great  enthusiasm  for  Stephen  Phillips's 
"  Herod  "  until  you  found  that  half  a  score  of  notices 
of  this  tragedy  were  written  by  the  same  hand ! 
It  seems  almost  impossible  that  "The  Letters  of 


192  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

William  James"  should  appear  shortly  after  "The 
Education  of  Henry  Adams,"  and,  though  the 
Jameses  were  New  Yorkers,  they  are  certainly 
redolent  of  New  England.  We  had  begun  to  forget 
our  debt  to  the  writers  of  New  England.  Mrs. 
Freeman  and  Mr.  Lincoln  hold  up  their  heads  as 
writers  of  modern  folk  stories;  but  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  has  become  eclectic.  It  has  lost  the  fla- 
vour of  New  England.  That  Boston  which  in 
the  Atlantic  had  always  been  a  state  of  mind  has 
become  different  from  the  real  old  Boston. 

In  truth,  Indiana  had  begun  to  blot  out  the  whole 
of  New  England,  and  Miss  Agnes  Repplier  had  be- 
gun to  stain  our  map  of  culture  with  the  modu- 
lated tints  of  Philadelphia.  For  myself,  I  had  re- 
turned to  the  novels  of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe — 
leaving  out  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  which  I  always 
found  detestable — to  "Elsie  Venner"  and  to  "The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,"  in  the  hope  that 
the  flavour  of  New  England,  which  I  found  to  my 
horror  was  growing  faint  in  me,  might  be  retained. 
There  is  always  "The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables!" 

But,  while  I  was  lingering  over  some  almost  for- 
gotten pages  of  Mrs.  Stowe  with  great  pleasure, 
something  she  said  reminded  me  of  Walter  Savage 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  193 

Landor,  and  I  turned  to  the  only  work  of  Landor 
which  had  ever  attracted  me,  "The  Imaginary 
Conversations."     There  was  an  interlude  of  en- 
joyment and  exasperation.     He  shows  himself  so 
malicious,  so  bigoted,  so  narrow,  and  so  incapable 
of  comprehending  some  of  the  historical  persons  he 
presents  to  us.     But  there  are  compensations,  all 
the  same.     Whatever  one  may  think  of  the  ani- 
mus of  Landor,  one  cannot  get  on  without  an  oc- 
casional dip  into  "The  Imaginary  Conversations." 
Suddenly  Landor  reminded  me  of  Marion  Craw- 
ford's "With  the  Immortals,"  and  I  rediscovered 
Marion  Crawford's  Heinrich  Heine!    To  have  dis- 
covered Heine  in  ZangwilPs  "In  a  Mattress  Grave" 
was  worth  a  long  search  through  many  magazines. 
Like  Stevenson's  "Lodging  for  the  Night,"  Zang- 
will's  few  pages  can  never  be  obliterated  from  the 
heart  of  a  loving  reader — by  a  loving  reader  I  mean 
a  reader  who  loves  men  a  little  more  than  books. 
You  will  remember  that  Crawford's  Immortals 
appear  at  Sorrento  where  Lady  Brenda  and  Au- 
gustus and  Gwendolyn  Chard  are  enjoying  the  fine 
flower  of  life.     If  Sir  Conan  Doyle  and  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge  could  only  bring  back  to  life,  or  induce  to 
come  back  to  life,  King  Francis  I.  and  Julius  Caesar 


194  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

and  Heinrich  Heine  and  Doctor  Johnson,1  together 
with  that  group  of  semi-happy  souls  who  live  on 
the  "enamelled  green"  of  Dante,  spiritism  might 
have  more  to  say  for  itself! 

"'I  call  a  cat  a  cat,'  as  Boileau  put  it,"  remarked  Heine. 
"I  would  like  to  know  how  many  men  in  a  hundred  are  dis- 
appointed in  the  women  they  marry." 

"Just  as  many  as  have  too  much  imagination,"  said 
Augustus. 

"No,"  said  Johnson,  shaking  his  head  violently  and  speak- 
ing suddenly  in  an  excited  tone.  "No.  Those  who  are 
disappointed  are  such  as  are  possessed  of  imagination  with- 
out judgment;  but  a  man  whose  imagination  does  not  outrun 
his  judgment  is  seldom  deceived  in  the  realisation  of  his 
hopes.  I  suspect  that  the  same  thing  is  true  in  the  art  of 
poetry,  of  which  Herr  Heine  is  at  once  a  master  and  a  judge. 
For  the  qualities  that  constitute  genius  are  invention,  im- 
agination and  judgment;  invention,  by  which  new  trains  of 
events  are  formed,  and  new  scenes  of  imagery  displayed; 
imagination,  which  strongly  impresses  on  the  writer's  mind, 
and  enables  him  to  convey  to  the  reader  the  various  form 
of  nature,  incidents  of  life  and  energies  of  passion;  and  judg- 
ment, which  selects  from  life  or  nature  what  the  present 
purpose  requires,  and  by  separating  the  essence  of  things 
from  its  concomitants,  often  makes  the  representation  more 
powerful  than  the  reality.     A  man  who  possesses  invention 


1 "  Cola  diritto,  sopra  il  verde  smalto 
mi  fur  moetrati  gli  spiriti  magni 
che  del  verderli  in  me  stesso  'n  esaUo" 

— INFERNO. 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  195 

and  imagination  can  invent  and  imagine  a  thousand  beauties, 
gifts  of  mind  and  virtues  of  character;  but  unless  he  have 
judgment  which  enables  him  to  discern  the  bounds  of  pos- 
sibility and  to  detect  the  real  nature  of  the  woman  he  has 
chosen  as  the  representative  of  his  self -formed  ideal,  he 
runs  great  risk  of  being  deceived.  As  a  general  rule,  how- 
ever, it  has  pleased  Providence  to  endow  man  with  much 
more  judgment  than  imagination;  and  to  this  cause  we  may 
attribute  the  small  number  of  poets  who  have  flourished  in 
the  world,  and  the  great  number  of  happy  marriages  among 
civilised  mankind." 

"It  appears  that  I  must  have  possessed  imagination  after 
all,"  said  Francis. 

"If  you  will  allow  me  to  say  it,"  said  Caesar  in  his  most 
suave  tones,  and  turning  his  heavy  black  eyes  upon  the  king's 
face,  "you  had  too  much.  Had  you  possessed  less  imagi- 
nation and  more  judgment,  you  might  many  times  have  de- 
stroyed the  Emperor  Charles.  To  challenge  him  to  fight 
a  duel  was  a  gratuitous  and  very  imaginative  piece  of  civility; 
to  let  him  escape  as  you  did  more  than  once  when  you  could 
easily  have  forced  an  engagement  on  terms  advantageous 
to  yourself,  was  unpardonable." 

"I  know  it,"  said  Francis,  bitterly.     "I  was  not  Csesar." 
"No,  sir,"  said  Johnson  in  loud,  harsh  tones,  "nor  were 

you  happy  in  your  marriages " 

"I  adore  learned  men,"  whispered  Francis  to  Lady  Brenda. 
He  had  at  once  recovered  his  good  humour. 

"A  fact  that  proves  what  I  was  saying,  that  the  element 
of  judgment  is  necessary  in  the  selection  of  a  wife,"  con- 
tinued the  doctor. 

"I  think  it  is  intuition  which  makes  the  right  people  fall 
in  love  with  each  other,"  said  Lady  Brenda. 

"Intuition,  madam,"  replied  Johnson,  "means  the  mental 


196  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

view;  as  you  use  it  you  mean  a  very  quick  and  accurate  men- 
tal view,  followed  immediately  by  an  unconscious  but  cor- 
rect process  of  deduction.  The  combination  of  the  two, 
when  they  are  nicely  adjusted,  constitutes  a  kind  of  judg- 
ment which,  though  it  be  not  always  so  correct  in  its  con- 
clusions, as  that  exercised  by  ordinary  logic,  has  neverthe- 
less the  advantage  of  quickness  combined  with  tolerable 
precision.  For,  in  matters  of  love,  it  is  necessary  to  be 
quick." 

"Who  sups  with  the  devil  must  have  a  long  spoon,"  said 
Francis,  laughing. 

"And  he  who  hopes  to  entertain  an  angel  must  keep  his 
house  clean,"  returned  the  doctor. 

"Do  you  believe  that  people  always  fall  in  love  very 
quickly?"  asked  Lady  Brenda. 

"Frequently,  though  not  always.  Love  dominates  quite 
as  much  because  its  attacks  are  sudden  and  unexpected,  as 
because  most  persons  believe  that  to  be  in  love  is  a  desirable 
state." 

"Love,"  said  Caesar,  "is  a  great  general  and  a  great  stra- 
tegist, for  he  rarely  fails  to  surprise  the  enemy  if  he  can,  but 
he  never  refuses  an  open  engagement  when  necessary." 

Strange  as  it  may  appear,  it  does  not  seem  to  be 
so  much  of  a  descent,  or  of  a  break  in  the  chain  of 
continuity,  to  turn  to  hear  William  James  speak  in 
letters,  which  have  the  effect  of  conversation. 
From  the  very  beginning  of  his  precious  book  I 
somehow  feel  that  I  am  part  of  the  little  circle 
about  him.  The  conversation  goes  on — Mr.  James 
never  loses  sight  of  the  point  of  view  and  sympathies 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  197 

of  the  party  of  the  second  part — and  you  are  not 
made  to  feel  as  an  eavesdropper. 

Standing  on  the  ladder,  unhappily  a  rather  shaky 
ladder,  to  put  back  "With  the  Immortals"  on  the 
shelf,  I  pass  Wells's  great  novel  of  "Marriage," 
which  I  would  clutch  to  read  again,  if  I  had  not  al- 
ready begun  this  Letter  of  James — written  to  his 
wife: 

I  have  often  thought  that  the  best  way  to  define  a  man's 
character  would  be  to  seek  out  the  particular  mental  or 
moral  attitude  in  which,  when  it  came  upon  him,  he  felt 
himself  most  deeply  and  intensely  active  and  alive.  At 
such  moments  there  is  a  voice  inside  which  speaks  and  says: 
"This  is  the  real  me!"  And  afterwards,  considering  the 
circumstances  in  which  the  man  is  placed,  and  noting  how 
some  of  them  are  fitted  to  evoke  this  attitude,  whilst  others 
do  not  call  for  it,  an  outside  observer  may  be  able  to  prophesy 
where  the  man  may  fail,  where  succeed,  where  be  happy 
and  where  miserable.  Now  as  well  as  I  can  describe  it, 
this  characteristic  attitude  in  me  always  involves  an  element 
of  active  tension,  of  holding  my  own,  as  it  were,  and  trust- 
ing outward  things  to  perform  their  part  so  as  to  make  it 
a  full  harmony,  but  without  any  guaranty  that  they  will. 
Make  it  a  guaranty — and  the  attitude  immediately  becomes 
to  my  consciousness  stagnant  and  stingless.  Take  away  the 
guaranty,  and  I  feel  (provided  I  am  iiberhaupt  in  vigorous 
condition)  a  sort  of  deep  enthusiastic  bliss,  of  bitter  willing- 
ness to  do  and  suffer  anything,  which  translates  itself  physi- 
cally by  a  kind  of  stinging  pain  inside  my  breast-bone 
(don't  smile  at  this — it  is  to  me  an  essential  element  of  the 


198  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

whole  thing!),  and  which,  although  it  is  a  mere  mood  or 
emotion  to  which  I  can  give  no  form  in  words,  authenticates 
itself  to  me  as  the  deepest  principle  of  all  active  and  theo- 
retic determination  which  I  possess.     .     .     . 


Personal  expression  is,  after  all,  what  we  long  for 
in  literature.  Cardinal  Newman  tells  us,  I  think, 
in  his  "Idea  of  a  University, "  that  it  is  the  very  es- 
sence of  literature.  Scientia  is  truth,  or  conclu- 
sions stated  as  truths  which  stand  irrespective  of  the 
personality  of  the  speaker  or  writer.  But  litera- 
ture, to  be  literature,  must  be  personal.  It  is  good 
literature  when  it  is  expressed  plastically,  and  in 
accordance  with  a  good  usage  of  its  time.  A  reader 
like  myself  does  not,  perhaps,  trouble  himself  suffi- 
ciently with  the  philosophy  of  William  James  as 
represented  in  these  "Letters."  One  has  a  lan- 
guid interest  in  knowing  what  he  thought  of  Berg- 
son  and  Nietzsche  or  even  of  Hegel;  but  for  the 
constant  reader  his  detachment  or  attachment  to 
Aristotle  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  is  not  nearly  so 
important  as  his  personal  impressions  of  both  the 
little  things  and  the  big  things  of  our  contempo- 
rary life.  Whether  you  are  pragmatic  or  not,  you 
must,  if  you  are  at  all  in  love  with  life,  become  a 
Jamesonian  after  you  have  read  the  "Letters"! 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  199 

And  his  son,  Mr.  Henry  James,  who,  we  may  hope, 
may  resemble  his  father  in  time,  has  arranged  them 
so  well,  and  kept  himself  so  tactfully  in  the  back- 
ground, that  you  feel,  too,  that  whether  young 
Henry  is  a  pragmatist  or  not,  he  is  a  most  under- 
standing human  being.  The  only  way  to  read 
these  "Letters"  is  to  dip  into  them  here  and  there, 
as  the  only  way  to  make  a  good  salad  is  to  pour  the 
vinegar  on  drop  by  drop.  To  use  an  oriental  meta- 
phor, the  oil  of  appreciation  is  stimulated  by  the 
acid  of  wit,  the  salt  of  wisdom,  and  the  pepper 
of  humour.  Frankly,  since  I  discovered  William 
James  as  a  human  being  I  have  begun  to  read  him 
for  the  same  reason  that  I  read  Pepys — for  pure 
enjoyment ! 

A  friend  of  mine,  feeling  that  I  had  taken  the 
"Letters  of  William  James"  too  frivolously,  told 
me  that  I  ought  to  go  to  Mr.  Wrells  to  counteract 
my  mediaeval  philosophy  and  too  cheerful  view  of 
life.  Just  as  if  I  had  not  struggled  with  Mr. 
Wells,  and  irritated  myself  into  a  temperature  in 
trying  to  get  through  his  latest  preachments !  I  am 
not  quite  sure  what  I  said  of  Mr.  Wells,  but  I  find, 
in  an  article  by  Mr.  Desmond  MacCarthy  in  the 
"New  Statesman,"  just  what  I  ought  to  have  said. 


200  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

This  doctrine  of  the  inspired  priesthood  of  authors  is  ex- 
aggerated and  dangerous.  Neither  has  it,  you  see,  prevented 
him  from  writing '  'The  Wonderful  Visit . "  Artists  should  feel, 
and  if  necessary  be  told,  that  they  are  on  their  honour  to  do 
their  best.  That  will  do.  If  they  flatter  themselves  that 
they  are  messengers  from  the  Father  of  Light  whenever 
they  put  pen  to  paper,  they  are  apt  to  take  any  emotional 
hubble-bubble  in  themselves  as  a  sign  that  the  Spirit  has 
been  brooding  upon  the  waters,  and  pour  out;  though  a 
short  time  afterwards  they  may  let  loose  a  spate  flowing  in 
a  quite  different  direction.  Sincerity  of  the  moment  is  not 
sincerity;  those  who  have  watched  England's  prime  minister 
know  that. 


Wilb'ain  James  helped  me  to  wash  the  bad  taste 
of  Mr.  Wells's  god  out  of  my  mouth.  It  seems  re- 
markable that  such  a  distinguished  man  of  talent — 
if  he  were  dead,  one  would  be  justified  in  saying  a 
man  of  genius — should  not  have  been  able  to  invent 
a  more  attractive  and  potent  Deity.  Voltaire, 
while  making  no  definition,  did  better  than  that; 
but  Voltaire  was  a  much  cleverer  man  than  Wells, 
and  he  had  an  education  such  as  no  modern  writer 
has.  When  Mr.  Wells  preaches,  he  becomes  a 
bore.  Who,  except  the  empty-minded,  or  those 
who,  like  the  Athenians,  are  always  seeking  new 
things,  can  take  Mr.  Wells's  dogmatisms  seriously? 
Is  it  not  in  one  of  his  "Sermones"  that  Horace 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  201 

tells  us  that  the  merchant  wants  to  be  a  sailor  and 
the  sailor  a  merchant?  Does  he  not  begin  with — 
Qui  fit,  Maecenas?  But  Horace  says  nothing  of 
the  authors  of  fiction — Stevenson  calls  them  very 
lightly  "filles  de  joie," — who  insist  on  being  boldly 
and  brutally  theologians  and  philosophers.  Hor- 
ace might  have  invented  a  better  god  than  Wells; 
but  he  had  too  much  good  taste  and  too  much 
knowledge  of  man  in  the  world  to  attempt  it. 

The  more  one  reads  of  the  very  moderns,  the 
more  one  falls  in  love  with  the  ancients.  Take 
the  peerless  Horatius  Flaccus,  for  instance.  Do 
you  think  anybody  would  read  his  Odes  and  Epodes 
and  love  him  as  we  do  if  he  insisted  that  we  should 
"sit  under  him"  and  assumed  a  pulpit  manner? 
This  is  as  near  as  he  ever  comes  to  teaching  us  any- 
thing : 

Lenit  albescens  animos  capillus 
Litium  et  rixae  cupidos  protervae; 
Non   ego  hoc  ferrem   calidus  juventa, 
Consule  Planco. 

Even  Sir  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton,  who  loved 
himself  very  much,  showed  in  his  translations  of 
"The  Odes  and  Epodes"  that  he  could  almost  love 
something  as  well  as  himself.     It  does  not  become 


202  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

me  to  recommend  books — everybody  to  his  own 
taste ! — but  I  should  like  to  say  that  for  those  whose 
Latin  has  become  only  a  faint  perfume  of  attar  of 
roses,  like  that  which  is  said  to  cling  faintly  to  one 
of  the  desks  of  Marie  Antoinette  at  Versailles,  the 
translations  of  our  dear  Horatius  by  Lord  Lytton 
is  a  very  precious  aid  to  a  knowledge  of  one  of  the 
most  charming  and  most  wise  of  pagan  poets. 
Horace  says: 

Postumus,  Postumus,  the  years  glide  by  us, 
Alas!  no  piety  delays  the  wrinkles, 
Nor  old  age  imminent, 

Nor  the  indomitable  hand  of  Death. 

We  might  have,  in  spite  of  the  awful  examples 
of  Mr.  Wells  and  the  other  preachers,  who  ought  to 
confine  themselves  to  finer  things,  desired  that 
Horace  should  have  gone  further  and  told  us  what 
kind  of  books  we  ought  to  read  in  our  old  age. 
His  choice  was  naturally  limited;  it  was  impossible 
for  him  to  buy  a  book  every  week,  or  every  month. 
The  publishers  were  not  so  active  in  those  days. 
But  he  might  have  indicated  the  kind  of  book  that 
old  age  might  read,  in  order  to  renew  its  youth.  I 
have  tried  "Robinson  Crusoe," — the  unequalled — 


LETTERS,  BIOGRAPHIES,  MEMOIRS  203 

and  "Swiss  Family  Robinson";  but  they  seem  too 
grown  up  for  me  now.  I  have  taken  to  "King 
Solomon's  Mines"  and  "Treasure  Island"  and  that 
perfect  gem  of  excitement  and  illusion,  "The  Mu- 
tineers," by  Charles  Boardman  Hawes.  I  read  it, 
and  I'm  young  again.  I  trust  that  some  enter- 
prising bookseller  will  unblushingly  compile  a 
library  for  the  old,  and  begin  it  with  "The  Mu- 
tineers!" The  main  difficulty  with  the  Old  or  the 
Near  Old  is  that  the  fear  of  shocking  the  Young 
makes  them  such  hypocrites.  They  pretend  that 
they  like  Mr.  Wells  and  the  other  preachers;  they 
express  intense  interest  in  new  and  ponderous 
books,  in  the  presence  of  Youth — when  they  ought 
to  yawn  frankly  and  bury  themselves  in  romances. 
But  if  the  Old  really  want  to  save  their  faces,  and 
at  the  same  time  enjoy  glimpses  of  that  fountain 
of  youth  which  we  long  for  at  every  age,  let  them 
acquire  two  books — Clifford  Smyth's  "The  Gilded 
Man"  and  "The  Quest  of  El  Dorado,"  by  Dr.  J.  A. 
Zahrn,  whose  nom  de  plume  was  H.  J.  Mozans. 
There  you  have  the  real  stuff.  Together,  these 
two  books  are  a  combination  of  just]  what  the  Old 
need  to  found  dreams  on.  If  a  man  does  not  smoke 
he  cannot  dream  with  any  facility  when  he  grows 


204  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

old ;  and  if  he  has  not  possessed  himself  of  these  two 
volumes,  he  cannot  have  acquired  that  basis  for 
dreams  which  the  energetic  Aged  greatly  need. 
"The  Gilded  Man"  is  frankly  a  romance,  and  yet, 
strangely  enough,  a  romance  of  facts,  and  "The 
Quest  of  El  Dorado"  is  the  only  volume  in  the 
English  language  when  it  deals  with  the  El  Dorado; 
it  has  all  the  most  attractive  qualities  of  a  romance. 
But  they  are  not  enough.  To  them  I  add,  "  Bob, 
Son  of  Battle,"  which  the  author  of  "Alice  For 
Short,"  discovered  late  in  life.  It  is  the  greatest 
animal-human  story  ever  written,  for  Owd  Bob  is 
nobly  human,  and  the  Black  Killer  devilishly  hu- 
man, and  yet  they  are  dogs;  not  fabulous  dogs,  in- 
vented by  clever  writers.  A  great  book!  It  is 
too  thrilling;  it  reminds  of  "Wuthering  Heights"; 
I  shall,  therefore,  read  this  evening  some  of  Henry 
Van  Dyke's  Canadian  stories,  and  end  the  day  with 
"Pride  and  Prejudice." 


CHAPTER  V 

Books  at  Random 

Among  nature  books  that  gave  me  many  happy 
hours  on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware — imperial 
river! — is  Charles  C.  Abbott's  "Upland  and  Mea- 
dow." "Better,"  Mr.  Abbott  says,  "repeat  the 
twelve  labours  of  Hercules  than  attempt  to  cata- 
logue the  varied  forms  of  life  found  in  the  area  of 
an  average  ramble!"  Soil  I  And  better  than  that, 
"to  feel  that  whatever  creature  we  may  meet  will 
prove  companionable — that  is,  no  stranger,  but 
rather  an  amusing  and  companionable  friend — 
assures  both  pleasure  and  profit  whenever  we 
chance  abroad." 

Who  that  has  made  "Upland  and  Meadow"  his 
companion  can  forget  the  extracts  from  the  diary 
of  the  Ancient  Man,  dated  Ninth  Month,  1734,  in 
the  Delaware  Valley?  Noisy  guns  had  reduced 
the  number  of  wild  ducks  and  geese,  he  says,  even 
then.  But,  nevertheless,  Watson's  Creek  was 
often  black  with  the  smaller  fowl. 

905 


206  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

I  do  seldom  see  the  great  swans,  but  father  says  that  they 
are  not  unusual  in  the  wide  stretches  of  the  Delaware. 


Happy  day!  when  the  wedge-shaped  battalions  of 
wild  geese  were  almost  as  frequently  seen  as  the 
spattering  sparrows  now! 

Father  allowed  me  [writes  the  good  Quaker  boy,  in 
1734]  to  accompany  my  Indian  friend,  Oconio,  to  Watson's 
creek,  that  we  may  gather  wild  fowl  after  the  Indian  manner. 
With  great  eagerness,  I  accompanied  Oconio,  and  thus 
happened  it.  We  did  reach  the  widest  part  of  that  creek 
early  in  the  morning,  I  think  the  sun  was  scarcely  an  half- 
hour  high.  Oconio  straightway  hid  himself  in  the  tall  grass 
by  the  water,  while  I  was  bidden  to  lie  in  the  tall  grass  at  a 
little  distance.  With  his  bow  and  arrows,  Oconio  quickly 
shot  a  duck  that  came  near,  by  swimming  within  a  short  dis- 
tance of  him.  I  marvelled  much  with  what  skill  he  shot,  for 
his  arrow  pierced  the  head  of  the  duck  which  gave  no  alarm- 
ing cry ....  Oconio  now  did  fashion  a  circlet  of  green 
boughs,  and  so  placed  them  about  his  head  and  shoulders  that 
I  saw  not  his  face;  he  otherwise  disrobed  and  walked  into  the 
stream.  He  held  in  one  hand  a  shotten  duck,  so  that  it 
swam  lustily,  and,  so  equipped,  was  in  the  midst  of  a  cluster 
of  fowl,  of  which  he  deftly  seized  several  so  quickly  that  their 
fellows  took  no  alarm.  These  he  strangled  beneath  the 
water,  and,  when  he  had  three  of  them,  came  back  with 
caution  to  where  the  thick  bushes  concealed  him.  He  de- 
sired that  I  should  do  the  same,  and  with  much  hesitation 
I  disrobed  and  assumed  the  disguise  Oconio  had  fashioned; 
then  I  put  forth  boldly  towards  the  gathered  fowl,  at  which 
they  did  arise  with  a  great  clamour,  and  were  gone.     I  marvel 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  207 

much  why  this  should  have  been,  but  Oconio  did  not  make  it 
clear,  and  I  forbore,  through  foolish  pride,  to  ask  him.  And 
let  it  not  be  borne  in  mind  against  me  [pleads  the  good 
Quaker  boy]  that,  when  I  reached  my  home,  I  wandered 
to  the  barn,  and  writing  an  ugly  word  upon  the  door,  sat 
long  and  gazed  at  it.  Chagrin  doth  make  me  feel  very 
meek,  I  find,  but  I  set  no  one  an  example  by  speech  or  act, 
in  thus  soothing  my  feelings  in  so  worldly  a  manner. 

This  example  may  be  commended  to  players 
of  golf,  who  are  inclined  to  be  "worldly."  The 
episode  of  Oconio  at  the  best  is  too  long  to  quote; 
it,  too,  has  its  lesson !  One  reads  Mr.  Abbott's  de- 
fence of  the  skunk  cabbage,  for  it  harbours  at  its 
root 

the  earliest  salamanders,  the  pretty  Maryland  yellow  throat 
nests  in  the  hollows  of  its  broad  leaves,  and  rare  beetles  find 
a  congenial  home  in  the  shelter  it  affords. 

"Upland  and  Meadow"  gives  one  occasion  for 
thought  on  the  subject  of  raccoons.  "Foolish 
creatures,  like  opossums,  thrive  while  cunning 
coons  are  forced  to  quest  or  die." 

For  a  stroll  by  the  Thames — I  mean  the  New 
England  Thames — there  is  no  book  like  Ik  Marvel's 
"Dream  Life,"  but  for  a  day  near  the  Delaware — 
imperial  river! — give  me  "Upland  and  Meadow." 

And  then  with  what  assurance  of  satisfaction 


208   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

may  one  turn  for  refreshment  to  the  continual 
charm  of  John  Burroughs's  books,  "Riverby"  and 
"  Pepacton."  Burroughs's  opinions  upon  the  prob- 
lems of  humanity  are  more  tiresome  than  John 
Bunyan's  opinions  on  theology;  but  to  go  with 
him  among  the  birds  and  the  plants,  to  hope  with 
him  that  the  soaring  lark  of  England  may  find  its 
way  down  through  Canada  to  our  hedges,  to  look 
with  him  into  the  nests  in  the  shrubs  that  border 
our  roads  is  to  begin  to  feel  that  joy  in  being  an 
American  of  the  soil  that  no  other  author  gives. 
He  cured  the  young  New  England  poets  and  the 
singers  of  the  Berkshire  Hills  and  of  the  Catskills 
of  celebrating  the  English  thrush  and  the  nightin- 
gale, as  if  those  birds  sang  on  the  Palisades. 

There  is  an  epithet  I  should  like  to  apply  to 
John  Burroughs,  but  he  might  not  like  it  if  he  were 
alive.  I  recall  the  case  of  a  pleasant  Englishman 
who  admired  two  American  girls  very  much,  be- 
cause, as  he  said,  they  were  ''so  homely."  In  fact, 
they  were  rather  pretty  girls,  and  he  had  not  used 
the  term  in  reference  to  their  looks.  It  is  the  word 
with  which  I  like  to  describe  John  Burroughs. 
Forty  years  ago,  I  met  him  at  Richard  Watson 
Gilder's.     He  was  young  then,   and   delightfully 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  209 

"homely"  in  the  sense  in  which  the  Englishman 
used  the  word.  Some  of  the  refined  ladies  at  Mrs. 
Gilder's  objected  to  his  "crude  speech,"  for  even 
in  the  eighties  there  were  still  precieuses.  The 
truth  is  that  his  rural  use  of  the  vernacular  was 
part  of  the  charm.  It  never  spoiled  his  style; 
but  it  gave  that  touch  of  homeliness  to  it  which 
smelt  of  the  good  soil  of  the  country. 

Thoreau's  "Walden"  always  reminds  me — a 
far-fetched  comparison  but  I  will  not  apologize  for 
it — of  "As  You  Like  It"  played  in  one  way  by 
Dybwad,  the  Norwegian  actress,  and  by  Julia 
Marlowe  in  another.  Madame  Dybwad,  being 
nearer  to  the  Elizabethan  time  in  her  daily  life, 
gives  us  an  Elizabethan  maiden  with  a  touch  of 
"homeliness";  but  Julia  Marlowe's,  like  Ada 
Rehan's  "Rosalind,"  has  something  of  the  artificial 
character  of  Watteau.  "Walden,"  then,  is  some- 
what too  varnished;  but  "Riverby"  and  "Pepact- 
on"  are  "homely"  and  "homey." 

To  return  to  memoirs  for  a  moment,  that  most 
delightful  of  all  mental  dissipations  for  a  leisurely 
man.  In  looking  for  the  second  volume  of  "Walden" 
— for  fear  that  I  should  have  done  Thoreau  an 
injustice — I  find  the  "Memoirs  of  the  Comtesse  de 


210   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Boigne. "  One  cannot  imagine  anything  more  un- 
like Madame  de  Boigne  than  Thoreau  and  John 
Burroughs!  Why  is  Madame  de  Boigne  on  the 
same  shelf  with  these  two  lovers  of  nature?  Ma- 
dame de  Boigne  was  never  a  lover  of  nature.  She 
loved  the  world  and  the  manifestations  of  the 
world,  and — not  to  be  ungallant — she  is  more  like 
an  irritated  mosquito  than  like  the  elegant  ca- 
mellia japonica  to  which  she  would  prefer  to  be 
compared. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  solid  comfort  in  the 
revelations  of  Madame  de  Boigne;  she  is  at  times 
so  very  untruthful  that  her  malice  does  no  real 
harm;  she  is  so  very  clever;  and  she  paints  interiors 
so  well;  and  gives  the  atmosphere  of  French  So- 
ciety before  and  during  the  Revolution  in  a  most 
fascinating  way.  She  always  thinks  the  worst, 
of  course;  but  a  writer  of  memoirs  who  always 
thought  the  best  would  be  as  painfully  uninterest- 
ing as  Froude  is  when  he  describes  the  character 
of  Henry  VIII.     But  this  is  a  digression. 

Mr.  John  Addington  Symonds  speaks  of  the 
style  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  as  displaying  a 
"rich  maturity  and  heavy-scented  blossom."  Mr. 
Mencken  cannot  accuse  any  modern  Englishman 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  211 

or  American  of  imitating,  in  his  desire  to  be  aca- 
demic, Browne's  hyperlatinism  or  his  use  of 
Latin  words,  like  "corpage, "  "confinium,"  "angus- 
tias, "  or  "Vivacious  abominations"  and  "conga- 
evous  generations." 
Mr.  Symonds  says: 

He  professes  a  mixture  of  the  boldest  scepticism  and  the 
most  puerile  credulity.  But  his  scepticism  is  the  prelude  to 
confessions  of  impassioned  faith,  and  his  credulity  is  the  re- 
sult of  tortuous  reflections  on  the  enigmas  of  life  and  reve- 
lation. Perhaps  the  following  paragraph  enables  us  to  un- 
derstand the  permanent  temper  of  his  mind  most  truly : 

"As  for  those  wingy  mysteries  in  divinity,  and  airy  sub- 
tleties in  religion,  which  have  unhinged  the  brains  of  better 
heads,  they  never  stretched  the  pia  mater  of  mine.  Me- 
thinks  there  be  not  impossibilities  enough  in  religion  for  an 
active  faith :  the  deepest  mysteries  ours  contains  have  not 
only  been  illustrated  but  maintained  by  syllogism  and  the 
rule  of  reason.  I  love  to  lose  myself  in  a  mystery;  to  pur- 
sue my  reason  to  an  O  altitudo !  'Tis  my  solitary  recreation 
to  pose  my  apprehension  with  those  involved  enigmas  and 
riddles  of  the  Trinity,  Incarnation,  and  Resurrection.  I  can 
answer  all  the  objections  of  Satan  and  my  rebellious  reason 
with  that  odd  resolution  I  learned  of  Tertullian,  Certum  est 
quia  impossible  est.  I  desire  to  exercise  my  faith  in  the 
difficultest  point,  for  to  credit  ordinary  and  visible  objects, 
is  not  faith,  but  persuasion." 

Leaving  all  question  of  theology,  or  criticism  of 
theology,  aside,  Sir  Thomas  lends  himself  to  those 


212  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

moments  when  a  man  wants  to  dip  a  little  into 
the  interior  life.  It  is  a  strange  thing  that  nearly 
all  the  modern  novelists  who  describe  men  seem  to 
think  that  their  interior  life  is  purely  emotional. 
Even  Mr.  Hugh  Walpole,1  my  favourite  among  the 
writers  in  the  spring  of  middle  age,  is  inclined  to 
make  his  heroes,  or  his  semi-heroes  (there  are  no 
good  real  honest  villains  in  fiction  now)  lead  lives 
that  are  not  at  all  interior.  And  yet  every  man 
either  leads  an  interior  life,  or  longs  to  lead  an 
interior  life,  of  which  he  seldom  talks.  He  wants 
inarticulately  to  know  something  of  the  art  of 
meditation;  his  dissatisfaction  with  life,  even  when 
he  is  successful,  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
has  never  been  taught  how  to  cultivate  the  spirit- 
ual sense.  This  is  an  art.  In  it  St.  Francis  de 
Sales  was  very  proficient.  It  gave  George  Herbert 
and  a  group  of  his  imitators  great  contentment  in 
the  state  to  which  they  were  called.  As  a  book  of 
secular  meditation  the  "Religio  Medici"  is  full  of 
good  points.  For  instance,  Sir  Thomas  starts  one 
on  the  road  to  meditation  on  the  difference  between 


1  Mr.  Walpole  has  almost  forfeited  the  allegiance  of  people  who  admired 
his  quality  of  well-bred  distinction  by  writing  in  "The  Young  Enchanted  " 
of  George  Eliot  as  a  "horse-faced  genius." 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  213 

democracy  and  freedom,  humanity  and  nationalism 
in  this  way : 

Let  us  speak  like  politicians;  there  is  a  nobility  without 
heraldry,  a  natural  dignity,  whereby  one  man  is  ranked  with 
another  filed  before  him,  according  to  the  quality  of  his 
desert  and  pre-eminence  of  his  good  parts.  Though  the 
corruption  of  these  times  and  the  bias  of  present  practice 
wheel  another  way,  thus  it  was  in  the  first  and  primitive 
commonwealths,  and  is  yet  in  the  integrity  and  cradle  of 
well-ordered  politics:  till  corruption  getteth  ground; — ruder 
desires  labouring  after  that  which  wiser  considerations  con- 
temn;— every  one  having  a  liberty  to  amass  and  heap  up 
riches,  and  they  a  license  or  faculty  to  do  or  purchase  any- 
thing. 

There  are  singular  beings  who  have  tried  to 
read  "Religio  Medici"  continuously.  Was  it 
Shakespeare,  whose  works  were  presented  to  one 
of  this  class?  "How  do  you  like  Shakespeare?" 
the  amiable  donor  asked.  "I  can't  say  yet;  I 
have  not  finished  him!"  It  seems  almost  miracu- 
lous that  human  beings  should  exist  who  take  this 
attitude  toward  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  his  "Urn 
Burial"  or  his  "Christian  Morals."  It  seems  al- 
most more  miraculous  that  this  attitude  should  be 
taken  toward  Montaigne,  and  that  some  folk 
should  prefer  the  "Essays  of  Montaigne"  in  the 
pleasant,  curtailed  edition  of  John  Florio's  trans- 


214  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

lation,  edited  by  Justin  Huntly  McCarthy !  These 
small  books  are  convenient,  no  doubt.  If  you  can- 
not have  the  original  French,  or  the  leisure  to 
browse  over  the  big  volume  of  Florio's  old  book  as 
it  was  written,  Mr.  McCarthy's  edition  is  an 
agreeable  but  not  satisfactory  substitute.  It 
somehow  or  other  reminds  one  of  that  appalling 
series  of  cutdown  "Classics,"  so  largely  recom- 
mended to  a  public  that  is  seduced  to  run  and 
read.  A  condensed  edition  of  Froissart  may  do 
very  well  for  boys;  but  who  can  visualize  the  kind 
of  mind  content  with  a  reduced  version  of  "Vanity 
Fair"? 

Montaigne  is  a  city  of  refuge  from  the  whirling 
words  of  the  uplifters.  At  times  I  have  been  com- 
pelled from  a  sense  of  duty,  a  mistaken  one,  to  read 
whole  pages  of  Mr.  Wells,  whose  "Marriage"  and 
"The  New  Machiavelli"  and  "Tono-Bungay," 
will  be  remembered  when  "Mr.  Britling" — by  the 
way,  what  did  Mr.  Britling  see  through? — shall 
be  forgotten.  As  an  antidote,  I  invariably  turn 
to  Montaigne.  It  amazed  me  to  hear  Montaigne 
called  a  skeptic.  He  is  even  more  reverent  toward 
the  eternal  verities  than  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and 
he  has  fewer  superstitions.     It  was  his  humanity 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  215 

and  his  love  for  religion  that  turned  him  from 
Aristotle  to  Plato,  and  yet  he  is  no  fanatic  for 
Plato.  He  is  a  real  amateur  of  good  books.  Lis- 
ten to  this : 

As  for  Cicero,  I  am  of  the  common  judgment,  that  besides 
learning  there  was  an  exquisite  eloquence  in  him:  He  was  a 
good  citizen,  of  an  honest,  gentle  nature,  as  are  commonly  fat 
and  burly  men:  for  so  was  he.  But  to  speake  truly  of 
him,  full  of  ambitious  vanity  and  remisse  niceness.  And  I 
know  not  well  how  to  excuse  him,  in  that  he  deemed  his 
Poesie  worthy  to  be  published.  It  is  no  great  imperfection 
to  make  bad  verses,  but  it  is  an  imperfection  in  him  that  he 
never  perceived  how  unworthy  they  were  of  the  glorie  of 
his  name.  Concerning  his  eloquence  it  is  beyond  all  com- 
parison, and  I  verily  believe  that  none  shall  ever  equall  it. 

Montaigne  sorrowed  it  a  thousand  times  that 
ever  the  book  written  by  Brutus  on  Virtue  was 
lost.  He  consoles  himself,  however,  by  remember- 
ing that  Brutus  is  so  well  represented  in  Plutarch. 
He  would  rather  know  what  talk  Brutus  had  with 
some  of  his  familiar  friends  in  his  tent  on  the  night 
before  going  to  battle  than  the  speech  he  made 
to  his  army.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  eloquent 
prefaces,  or  with  circumlocutions  that  keep  the 
reader  back  from  the  real  matter  of  books.  He 
does  not  want  to  hear  heralds  or  criers.     How  he 


216  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

would  have  hated  the  flare  of  trumpets  that  pre- 
cedes the  entrance  of  the  best  sellers!  And  the 
blazing  "jackets,"  the  lowest  form  of  modern  art, 
would  have  made  him  rip  out  the  favourite  oaths 
of  his  province  with  violence. 

"The  Romans  in  their  religion,"  he  says,  "were 
wont  to  say  '  Hoc  age ' ;  which  in  ours  we  say,  '  Sur- 
sum  corda.'" 

He  goes  to  a  book  as  he  goes  to  a  good  dinner; 
he  does  not  care  for  the  hors  d'ceuvres.  Note  how 
he  rushes  with  rather  rough  weapons  to  the  trans- 
lation, by  his  dying  father's  command,  of  Theo- 
logia  naturalis  sive  liber  creaturarum  magistri 
Raimondi  de  Sebonde.  He  thinks  that  it  is  a  good 
antidote  for  the  "new  f angles"  of  Luther,  who  is 
leading  the  vulgar  to  think  for  themselves  and  to 
reject  authority.  His  analysis  of  himself  in  the 
essay  "Of  Cruelty"  is  the  message  of  a  sane  man 
to  sane  men;  and  he  does  not  hesitate  to  point  out 
the  fact  that  no  hatred  is  so  absolute  as  that  which 
Christians  can  cover  with  the  cloak  of  Christianity. 
The  discord  between  zeal  for  religion  and  the  fury 
of  nationality  concerns  him  greatly,  and  he  does 
not  hesitate  to  read  a  well-deserved  lesson  to  his 
contemporaries  on  the  subject. 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  217 

In  Montaigne's  time  the  theories  which  Machi- 
avelli  had  gathered  together  in  "The  Prince," 
governed  Europe.  One  can  see  that  they  do 
not  satisfy  Montaigne.  To  him  they  are  ne- 
farious. 

'"The  Prince,'"  declares  Villari,  "had  a  more 
direct  action  on  real  life  than  any  other  book  in 
the  world,  and  a  larger  share  in  emancipating 
Europe  from  the  Middle  Ages." 

It  is  a  shocking  confession  to  make,  and  yet  the 
"Essays"  of  Michel  de  Montaigne  give  me  as 
much  pleasure,  but  not  so  much  edification,  as 
the  precious  sentences  of  Thomas  a  Kempis. 
They  are  foils;  at  first  sight  there  seems  to  be  no 
relationship  between  them;  and  yet  at  heart 
Michel  de  Montaigne,  who  was  really  not  a  skeptic, 
has  much  in  common  with  Thomas  a  Kempis. 
If  there  were  no  persons  in  the  world  capable  of 
being  Montaignes,  Thomas  a  Kempis  would  have 
written  for  God  alone.  He  would  have  resembled 
an  altar  railing  which  I  once  heard  Father  Faber 
had  erected.  On  the  side  toward  the  altar  it  was 
foliated  and  exquisitely  carved  in  a  manner  that 
pleased  Ruskin.  On  the  outer  side,  the  side 
toward  the  people  and  not  the   side  toward   the 


218  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Presence  of  God,  it  was   entirely  plain  and  un- 
ornamented ! 

The  friendship  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  I  owe  to 
George  Eliot.  Emerson  might  easily  perish;  Plato 
might  go,  and  even  Horace  be  drowned  in  his  last 
supply  of  Falernian;  Marcus  Aurelius  and  even 
Rudyard  Kipling  might  exist  only  in  tradition; 
but  the  loss  of  all  their  works  would  be  as  nothing 
compared  to  the  loss  of  that  little  volume  which 
is  a  marvellous  guide  to  life.  The  translations  of 
Thomas  a  Kempis  into  English  vary  in  value. 
Certain  dissenters  have  cut  out  the  very  soul  of 
A  Kempis  in  deleting  the  passages  on  the  Holy 
Eucharist.  Think  of  Bowdlerizing  Thomas  a 
Kempis!  He  was,  above  all,  a  mystic,  and  all  the 
philosophy  of  his  love  of  Christ  limps  when  the 
mystical  centre  of  it,  the  Eucharist,  is  cut  out. 
If  that  meeting  in  the  upper  room  had  not  taken 
place  during  the  paschal  season,  if  Christ  had  not 
offered  His  body  and  blood,  soul  and  divinity  to 
his  amazed,  yet  reverent,  disciples,  Thomas  a 
Kempis  would  never  have  written  "The  Following 
of  Christ."  The  Bible,  even  the  New  Testament, 
is  full  of  sayings  which,  as  St.  James  says  of  St. 
Paul's  Epistles,  are  not  easy  sayings,  but  what 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  219 

better  interpretation  of  the  doctrines  of  Christ  as 
applied  to  everyday  life  can  there  be  found  than  in 
this  precious  little  book? 

You  may  talk  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  gather 
what  comfort  you  can  from  the  philosophy  of 
Thoreau's  "Walden" — which  might,  after  all,  be 
more  comfortable  if  it  were  more  pagan.  The 
Pan  of  Thoreau  was  a  respectable  Pan,  because  he 
was  a  Unitarian;  you  may  find  some  comfort  in 
Keble's  "Christian  Year"  if  you  can;  but  A 
Kempis  overtops  all!  It  is  strange,  too,  what  an 
appeal  this  great  mystic  has  to  the  unbelievers  in 
Christianity.  It  is  a  contradiction  we  meet  with 
every  day.  And  George  Eliot  was  a  remarkable 
example  of  this,  for,  in  spite  of  her  habitual  rev- 
erence, she  cannot  be  said  to  have  accepted  ortho- 
dox dogmas.  Another  paradox  seems  to  be  in  the 
fact  that  Thomas  a  Kempis  appeals  so  directly 
and  consciously  to  the  confirmed  mystic  and  to 
those  who  have  secluded  themselves  from  the 
world.  At  first,  I  must  confess  that  I  found  this 
a  great  obstacle  to  my  joy  in  having  found  him. 

If  Montaigne  frequently  drove  me  to  A  Kempis, 
A  Kempis  almost  as  frequently  in  the  beginning 
drove  me  back  to  Montaigne.     It  was  not  until 


220  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

I  had  become  more  familiar  with  the  New  Testa- 
ment that  I  began  to  see  that  A  Kempis  spoke 
as  one  soul  to  another.  In  this  world  for  him 
there  were  only  three  Facts — God,  his  own  soul, 
and  the  soul  to  whom  he  spoke. 

It  was  a  puzzle  to  me  to  observe  that  so  many 
of  my  friends  who  looked  on  the  Last  Supper  as  a 
mere  symbol  of  love  and  hospitality,  should  cling 
to  "The  Following  of  Christ1'  with  such  devotion. 
Even  the  example  of  an  intellectual  friend  of 
mine,  a  Bostonian  who  had  lived  much  in  Italy, 
could  not  make  it  clear.  He  often  asserted  that  he 
did  not  believe  in  God;  and  yet  he  was  desolate 
if  on  a  certain  day  in  the  year  he  did  not  pay  some 
kind  of  tribute  at  the  shrine  of  St.  Antony  of 
Padua ! 

I  have  known  him  to  break  up  a  party  in  the 
Adirondacks  in  order  to  reach  the  nearest  church 
where  it  was  possible  for  him  to  burn  a  candle  in 
honour  of  his  favourite  saint  on  this  mysterious 
anniversary!  As  long  as  he  exists,  as  long  as  he 
continues  to  burn  candles — les  chandelles  d'un 
athee — I  shall  accept  without  understanding  the 
enthusiasm  of  so  many  lovers  of  A  Kempis,  who 
cut  out  the  mystical  longings  for  the  reception  of 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  221 

that  divine  food  which  Christ  gave   out  in  the 
upper  room.     A  Kempis  says: 

My  soul  longs  to  be  nourished  with  Thy  body;  my  heart 
desires  to  be  united  with  Thee. 

Give  Thyself  to  me  and  it  is  enough;  for  without  Thee  no 
comfort  is  available. 

Without  Thee  I  cannot  subsist;  and  without  Thy  visita- 
tion I  cannot  live. 

And,  therefore,  I  must  come  often  to  Thee,  and  receive 
Thee  for  the  remedy,  and  for  the  health  and  strength  of  my 
soul;  lest  perhaps  I  faint  in  the  way,  if  I  be  deprived  of  this 
heavenly  food. 

For  so,  O  most  merciful  Jesus,  Thou  wast  pleased  once  to 
say,  when  Thou  hadst  been  preaching  to  the  people,  and 
curing  sundry  diseases:  "I  will  not  send  them  away  fasting, 
lest  they  faint  in  the  way. " 

Deal  now  in  like  manner  with  me,  who  has  left  Thyself 
in  the  sacrament  for  the  comfort  of  Thy  faithful. 

For  Thou  art  the  most  sweet  reflection  of  the  soul ;  and  he 
that  shall  eat  Thee  worthily  shall  be  partaker  and  heir  of 
everlasting  glory. 

To  every  soul,  oppressed  and  humble,  A  Kempis 
speaks  more  poignantly  than  even  David,  in  that 
great  cry  of  the  heart  and  soul,  the  De  Profundis: 

Behold,  then,  O  Lord,  my  abjection  and  frailty  [Ps.  xxiv. 
18],  every  way  known  to  Thee. 

Have  pity  on  me  and  draw  me  out  of  the  mire  [Ps.  lxviii. 
15],  that  I  stick  not  fast  therein,  that  I  may  not  be  utterly 
cast  down  forever. 


222  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

This  it  is  which  often  drives  me  back  and  confounds  me  in 
Thy  sight,  to  find  that  I  am  so  subject  to  fall  and  have  so 
little  strength  to  resist  my  passions. 

And  although  I  do  not  altogether  consent,  yet  their  as- 
saults are  troublesome  and  grievous  to  me,  and  it  is  exceed- 
ingly irksome  to  live  thus  always  in  a  conflict. 

Hence  my  infirmity  is  made  known  to  me,  because  wicked 
thoughts  do  always  much  more  easily  rush  in  upon  me  than 
they  can  be  cast  out  again. 

Oh,  that  Thou,  the  most  mighty  God  of  Israel,  the  zealous 
lover  of  faithful  souls,  wouldst  behold  the  labour  and  sorrow 
of  Thy  servant,  and  stand  by  me  in  all  my  undertakings. 

Strengthen  me  with  heavenly  fortitude,  lest  the  old  man, 
the  miserable  flesh,  not  fully  subject  to  the  spirit,  prevail 
and  get  the  upper  hand,  against  which  we  must  fight  as  long 
as  we  breathe  in  this  most  wretched  life. 

Alas!  what  kind  of  life  is  this,  where  afflictions  and  mis- 
eries are  never  wanting;  where  all  things  are  full  of  snares 
and  enemies. 

There  is  no  pessimism  here,  for  Thomas  a 
Kempis  gives  the  remedies,  the  only  remedies 
offered  to  the  world  since  light  was  created  before 
the  sun.  He  offers  no  maudlin  consolation;  to 
him  the  sins  of  the  intellect  are  worse  than  the 
sins  of  the  flesh.  He  believed  in  hell,  which  he 
never  defined,  as  devoutly  as  Dante,  who  did  de- 
scribe it.  They  both  knew  their  hearts  and  the 
world;  and  the  world  has  never  invented  any 
remedy  so  effective  as  that  which  A  Kempis  offers. 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  223 

It  is  the  divine  remedy  of  love;  but  love  cannot 
exist  without  the  fear  of  hurting  or  offending  the 
Beloved. 

The  best  book  yet  written  on  the  causes  that 
made  for  the  World  War  and  on  their  remedy  is 
"The  Rebuilding  of  Europe,"  by  David  Jayne 
Hill.  There  we  find  this  quotation  from  Villari 
illuminated: 

but  it  would  be  more  exact  to  say  that  Machiavelli's  work 
written  in  1513  and  published  in  1532  was  the  perfect  ex- 
pression of  an  emancipation  from  moral  restraints  far  ad- 
vanced. The  Christ-idealism  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  al- 
ready largely  disappeared.  The  old  grounds  of  obligation 
had  been  swept  away.  Men  looked  for  their  safety  to  the 
natio-state  rather  than  to  the  solidarity  of  Christendom;  and 
the  state,  as  Machiavelli's  gospel  proclaimed  it,  consisted  in 
absolute  and  irresponsible  control  exercised  by  one  man 
who  should  embody  its  unity,  strength,  and  authority. 

Montaigne  felt  rather  than  understood  the 
cruelty  and  brutality  of  the  state  traditions  of  his 
time;  and  these  traditions  were  seriously  com- 
batted  when  the  United  States  made  brave  ef- 
forts both  at  Versailles  and  Washington.  Doctor 
Hill  sums  up  the  essential  principles  which  guided 
the  world  from  the  Renascence  to  the  year  1918: 


224   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

(1)  The  essence  of  a  State  is  "sovereignty,"  defined  as 
"supreme  power."  (2)  A  sovereign  State  has  the  right  to 
declare  war  upon  any  other  sovereign  State  for  any  reason 
that  seems  to  it  sufficient.  (3)  An  act  of  conquest  by  the 
exercise  of  superior  military  force  entitles  the  conqueror  to 
the  possession  of  the  conquered  territory.  (4)  The  popu- 
lation goes  with  the  land  and  becomes  subject  to  the  will  of 
the  conqueror. 

What  member  of  the  memorable  conference, 
which  began  at  Washington  on  November  12,  1921, 
would  have  dared  to  assert  these  unmoral  prin- 
ciples, accepted  alike  by  the  Congress  of  Vienna 
and  the  Congress  of  Berlin,  in  principle?  King 
John  of  England  looked  on  their  negation  as  an 
unholy  novelty,  though  that  negation  was  the 
leaven  of  the  best  of  the  life  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  germ  of  the  idea 
of  freedom  was  kept  alive,  in  the  miasma  which 
poisoned  "The  Prince"  and Machiavelli's  world,  by 
men  like  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  Montaigne.  A 
better  understanding  of  the  principles  of  these  men 
would  have  made  Milton  less  autocratic — Lucifer, 
though  a  rebel,  was  not  a  democrat — and  Voltaire 
less  destructive.  And  yet  Voltaire,  for  whom  the 
French  Republic  lately  named  a  war  vessel,  was  the 
friend  of  Frederick  the  Great  and  of  Catherine  II. 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  225 

Doctor  Hill,  to  whom  some  of  the  passages  in  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  and  Montaigne  sent  me,  says : 

Down  to  the  invasion  of  Belgium  in  1914  the  most  odious 
crime  ever  committed  against  a  civilized  people  was,  no 
doubt,  the  first  partition  of  Poland;  yet  at  the  time  not  a 
voice  was  raised  against  it.  Louis  XV.  was  "infinitely  dis- 
pleased," but  he  did  not  even  reply  to  the  King  of  Poland's 
appeal  for  help.  George  III.  coolly  answered  that  "justice 
ought  to  be  the  invariable  rule  of  sovereigns";  but  con- 
cluded, "  I  fear,  however,  misfortunes  have  reached  the  point 
where  redress  can  be  had  from  the  hands  of  the  Almighty 
alone. "  Catherine  II.  thought  justice  satisfied  when  "every- 
one takes  something. "  Frederick  II.  wrote  to  his  brother, 
"  The  partition  will  unite  the  three  religions,  Greek,  Catholic, 
and  Calvinist;  for  we  would  take  our  communion  from  the 
same  consecrated  body,  which  is  Poland."  Only  Maria 
Theresa  felt  a  twinge  of  conscience.  She  took  but  she  felt 
the  shame  of  it.  She  wrote:  "We  have  by  our  moderation 
and  fidelity  to  our  engagements  acquired  the  confidence,  I 
may  venture  to  say  the  admiration,  of  Europe.  .  .  .  One 
year  has  lost  it  all.  I  confess,  it  is  difficult  to  endure  it,  and 
that  nothing  in  the  world  has  cost  me  more  than  the  loss  of 
our  good  name."  It  is  a  strange  phenomenon  that  in  mat- 
ters where  the  unsophisticated  human  conscience  so  promptly 
pronounces  judgment  and  spontaneously  condemns,  the 
solid  mass  of  moral  conviction  should  count  for  nothing  in 
affairs  of  state.  Against  it  a  purely  national  prejudice  has 
never  failed  to  prevail. 

Montaigne  does  not  formulate  his  comparisons 
so  clearly;  nor  does  Sir  Thomas  Browne  touch  so 


226   CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

unerringly  the  canker  in  the  root  of  the  politics  of 
his  time;  but  one  cannot  saturate  oneself  in  the 
works  of  either  without  contrasting  them  with  the 
physiocrats  of  the  eighteenth  century,  who  tore  up 
the  cockles  and  the  wheat  together. 

Of  all  American  writers  Mr,  H.  L.  Mencken  is  the 
most  adventurous,  and  one  might  almost  say  the 
cleverest.  He  could  not  be  dull  if  he  tried.  This 
is  admirably  exemplified  in  "The  American  Lan- 
guage," which  appears  in  a  second  edition,  revised 
and  enlarged  and  dated  1921.  We  are  told  that 
Mencken  was  born  in  Baltimore  on  September  12, 
1880;  that  his  family  has  been  settled  in  Maryland 
for  nearly  a  hundred  years ;  and  that  he  is  of  mixed 
ancestry,  chiefly  German,  Irish,  and  English.  He 
is,  therefore,  a  typical  American,  and  well  qualified 
to  write  on  "The  American  Language."  Mr. 
Mencken  truly  says  that  the  weakest  courses  in  our 
universities  are  those  which  concern  themselves 
with  written  and  spoken  English.  He  adds  that 
such  grammar  as  is  taught  in  our  schools  and  col- 
leges 

is  a  grammar  standing  four-legged  upon  the  theorizings  and 
false  inferences  of  English  Latinists  of  a  past  generation, 
eager  only  to  break  the  wild  tongue  of  Shakespeare  to  a  rule; 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  227 

and  its  frank  aim  is  to  create  in  us  a  high  respect  for  a  book 
language  which  few  of  us  ever  actually  speak  and  not  many 
of  us  even  learn  to  write.  That  language,  elaborately  arti- 
ficial though  it  may  be,  undoubtedly  has  merits.  It  shows 
a  sonority  and  a  stateliness  that  you  must  go  to  the  Latin 
and  the  Golden  Age  to  match;  its  "  highly  charged  and  heavy- 
shotted"  periods,  in  Matthew  Arnold's  phrase,  serve  ad- 
mirably the  obscurantist  purposes  of  American  pedagogy 
and  of  English  parliamentary  oratory  and  leader-writing; 
it  is  something  new  for  the  literary  artists  of  both  countries 
to  prove  their  skill  upon  by  flouting  it.  But  to  the  average 
American,  bent  upon  expressing  his  ideas,  not  stupendously 
but  merely  clearly,  it  must  always  remain  something  vague 
and  remote,  like  Greek  history  or  the  properties  of  the  pa- 
rabola, for  he  never  speaks  it  or  hears  it  spoken,  and  seldom 
encounters  it  in  his  everyday  reading.  If  he  learns  to  write 
it,  which  is  not  often,  it  is  with  a  rather  depressing  sense  of 
its  artificiality.  He  may  master  it  as  a  Korean,  bred  in  the 
colloquial  Onmun,  may  master  the  literary  Korean-Chinese, 
but  he  never  thinks  in  it  or  quite  feels  it. 

Mr.  Mencken  is  both  instructive  and  destructive ; 
but  he  is  not  so  constructive  as  to  build  a  road 
through  the  marsh  of  confusion  into  which  that 
conflict  of  dialects  in  the  English  language — a 
language  which  is  grammarless  and  dependent 
upon  usage — has  left  us.  He  tells  us  that  good 
writing  consists,  as  in  the  case  of  Howells,  in  de- 
liberately throwing  overboard  the  principles  so 
elaborately  inculcated,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  Lin- 


228  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

coin,  in  standing  unaware  of  them.  Whether  this 
is  true  in  the  case  of  Howells  or  not,  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  Lincoln  was  fed,  through  his  read- 
ing, on  the  results  of  those  linguistic  principles 
which  are  with  us  in  English  tradition.  It  is  the 
usage  of  Cardinal  Newman  or  Hawthorne  or  Ste- 
venson or  Agnes  Repplier,  or  of  Lincoln  himself, 
which  those  who  want  to  write  good  English  follow 
rather  than  the  elaborate  rules  of  confused  English 
grammar  which  are  forgotten  almost  as  soon  as 
they  are  learned. 

Personally,  in  youthful  days,  I  could  make 
nothing  out  of  the  "grammar"  of  the  English  lan- 
guage until  I  had  begun  to  study  Latin  prosody: 
and  then  it  became  clear  to  me  that  only  a  few 
bones  in  the  structure  of  English,  taken  from  the 
Latin  practice,  were  valuable;  that  the  flesh  of  the 
English  tongue  would  not  fit  the  whole  skeleton. 

As  the  English  language,  spoken  everywhere, 
must  depend  on  good  usage,  and  the  bad  usage  of 
to-day  often  becomes  the  good  usage  of  to-morrow, 
it  is  regrettable  that  no  scientific  study  of  the 
American  vocabulary  or  of  the  influences  lying  at 
the  root  of  American  word-formation — to  quote 
Mr.  Mencken — has  as  yet  been  made.     The  elder 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  229 

student  was  content  with  correcting  the  examples 
of  bad  English  in  Blair's  "Rhetoric."  Later,  he 
read  "The  Dean's  English,"  very  popular  at  one 
time,  Richard  Grant  White's  "Words  and  Their 
Uses,"  and  perhaps  a  little  book  called  "The  Ver- 
balist." To  this,  one  of  the  most  bewildering  books 
on  the  manner  of  writing  English  ever  written, 
Herbert  Spencer's  "Philosophy  of  Style"  was 
added.  Whether  it  is  Herbert  Spencer's  lack  of  a 
sense  of  humour  or  the  fallibility  of  his  theories 
that  has  put  him  somewhat  out  of  date  is  not  easy 
to  say.  In  no  book  of  his  is  a  sense  of  humour  so 
lacking  as  in  the  "Philosophy  of  Style."  Its 
principles  have  a  perennial  value  and  nearly  every 
author  on  style,  since  Spencer  wrote,  has  repeated 
them  with  variations ;  but  Spencer's  method  of  pre- 
senting them  is  as  involved  as  any  method  adopted 
by  a  philosopher  could  be — and  that  is  saying  a 
good  deal. 

The  English  of  the  universities  hold  that  Amer- 
icans are  the  slave  of  Webster's  Dictionary;  and 
this  is  true  of  a  certain  limited  class  of  Americans. 
The  English  public  speaker  allows  himself  more 
freedom  in  the  matter  of  pronunciation  than  very 
scrupulous  Americans  do.    Lord  Balfour's  speeches 


230  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

at  the  Washington  Conference  offered  several  ex- 
amples of  this. 

"The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  has 
decided  that  Webster's  Dictionary  is  tJie  American 
dictionary,  and  I  propose  to  consider  all  its  de- 
cisions as  final,"  said,  in  hot  argument,  a  New 
York  lawyer  who  habitually  uses  "dontcha  know" 
and  "I  wanta."  Shakespeare,  he  regards  as  an 
author  whose  English  ought  to  be  corrected;  and 
he  became  furious  over  what  he  called  the  mis- 
pronunciation of  "apotheosis,"  which  he  said  a 
favourite  preacher  had  not  uttered  according  to 
Webster.  And  I  have  known  literary  societies  in 
the  South  to  be  disrupted  over  the  use  of  the  word 
"nasty"  by  a  Northern  woman;  and,  as  for 
"bloody,"  Mr.  Mencken  shows  us  that  one  of  the 
outrages  committed  by  Mr.  Shaw  against  English 
convention  was  his  permitting  the  heroine  of 
"Pygmalion"  to  use  it  on  the  stage.  There  is  one 
Americanism,  however,  against  which,  as  far  as  I 
can  find,  Mr.  Mencken  does  not  protest.  It  is  the 
use  of  the  word  "consummated"  in  a  phrase  like 
"the  marriage  was  consummated  in  the  First  Bap- 
tist Church  at  high  noon"! 

In  spite  of  democratic  disapproval,  some  will 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  231 

still  hold  that  "lift"  is  better  than  "elevator,"  and 
"station"  better  than  "depot."  Though  these 
are  departures  from  the  current  vernacular.  We 
speak  English  often  when  our  critical  friends  in 
England  imagine  that  we  are  speaking  American. 
I  have  known  a  gentleman  in  New  Jersey  who  has 
cultivated  English  traditions  of  speech,  to  shrink 
in  horror  at  the  mention  of  "flap-jack"  and  "ice- 
cream." He  could  never  find  a  substitute  in  real 
English  for  "flap-jack,"  but  he  always  substituted 
"ices"  for  "ice-cream."  On  one  occasion  I  heard 
him  inveigh  against  the  horror  of  the  word  "pies," 
for  those  "detestable  messy  things  sold  by  the  ton 
to  the  uncivilized";  and  he  spent  the  time  of  lunch 
in  pointing  out  that  no  such  composition  really  ex- 
isted in  polite  society;  but  when  his  "cook  general" 
was  seen  approaching  with  an  unmistakable  "pie, " 
the  kind  supposed  by  the  readers  of  advertise- 
ments to  be  made  by  "mothers,"  and  ordered 
hastily  because  of  the  coming  of  the  unexpected 
guest,  he  was  cast  down.  The  guest  tried  to  save 
the  situation  by  speaking  of  the  obnoxious  pastry 
as  "a  tart."  The  host  shook  his  head — "a  tart," 
in  English,  could  never  be  covered! 

Mr.  Mencken  shows  us  that  "flap-jack,"  "mo- 


232  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

lasses,"  "home-spun,"  "ice-cream"  are  old  Eng- 
lish; that  "Bub,"  which  used  to  shock  London 
visitors  to  Old  Philadelphia,  is  a  bit  of  provincial 
English;  and  that  "muss"  is  found  in  "Antony 
and  Cleopatra."  I  wish  I  had  known  that  when  I 
was  young;  it  would  have  saved  me  a  bad  mark  for 
paraphrasing  "Menelaus  and  Paris  got  into  a  muss 
over  Helen."  But  probably  the  use  of  "row"  to 
express  that  little  difficulty  would  not  have  saved 
me! 

The  best  judge  of  Madeira  in  Philadelphia  al- 
ways said  "cheer"  for  "chair"  and  "sasser"  for 
"saucer"  and  "tay"  for  "tea"  and  "obleged"  for 
"obliged";  and  he  drank  from  his  saucer,  too;  and 
his  table  was  always  provided  with  little  dishes, 
like  butter  plates,  for  the  discarded  cups.  His  ex- 
ample gave  me  a  profound  contempt  for  those 
newly  rich  in  learning  who  laugh  without  under- 
standing, who  are  the  slaves  of  the  dictionary,  and 
who  are  so  "vastly"  meticulous.  This  old  gentle- 
man was  an  education  in  himself;  he  had  lived  at 
the  "English  court" — or  near  it — and  when  he 
came  to  visit  us  once  a  year,  we  listened  enrap- 
tured. I  once  fell  from  grace;  but  not  from  my  rev- 
erence for  him,  by  making  a  mistake  in  my  search 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  233 

for  knowledge  which  involved  his  age.  It  was 
very  easy  to  ask  him  whether  Anne  Boleyn  had 
asked  for  a  "cheer"  but  not  easy  to  escape  from 
the  family  denunciation  that  followed.  It  seemed 
that  he  had  not  lived  at  or  near  the  court  of  Henry 
VIII! 

Mr.  Mencken  explains  why  the  use  of  "sick" 
for  "ill"  is  taboo  in  England,  except  among  the 
very  youngest  Realists.  And,  by  the  way,  Mr. 
Hugh  Walpole  in  "The  Young  Enchanted"  goes 
so  far  in  one  of  the  speeches  of  the  atrocious  Mrs. 
Tennsen,  that  the  shocking  word  "bloody"  used 
by  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  on  one  famous  occasion 
sinks  into  a  pastel  tint !    Mr.  Mencken  says : 

The  Pilgrims  brought  over  with  them  the  English  of 
James  I.  and  the  Authorized  Version,  and  their  descendants 
of  a  century  later,  inheriting  it,  allowed  the  fundamentals  to 
be  but  little  changed  by  the  academic  overhauling  that  the 
mother  tongue  was  put  to  during  the  early  part  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century. 

The  Bible  won  against  the  prudery  of  the  new 
English;  prudery  will  go  very  far,  and  I  can  recall 
the  objection  of  an  evangelical  lady,  in  Philadel- 
phia, who  disliked  the  nightly  saying  of  the  "Ave 
Maria"  by  a  little  Papist  relative.     This  was  not 


234  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

on  religious  grounds;  it  was  because  of  "blessed 
is  the  fruit  of  thy  womb,  Jesus,"  in  the  prayer. 
The  little  Papist  had  been  taught  to  repeat  the 
salutation  of  the  Angel  Gabriel  in  Latin,  so,  at 
bedtime,  he  changed  to  "Benedictus  fructus  ven- 
tris  tui"  and  the  careful  lady  thought  it  sounded 
"more  decent"! 

Poker  players  may  be  interested  in  Mr.  Mencken's 
revelation  that  "ante"  came  into  our  language 
through  the  Spanish;  he  says, 

cinch  was  borrowed  from  the  Spanish  "cincha"  in  the  early 
Texas  days,  though  its  figurative  use  did  not  come  in  until 
much  later. 

It  is  pleasant  to  note  the  soundness  of  Mr. 
Mencken's  judgment  in  regard  to  that  very  great 
philologer,  the  Dane,  Doctor  Jespersen,  and  he 
quotes,  in  favour  of  the  clarity  and  directness  of 
the  English  language,  another  great  Dane,  Doctor 
Thomson.  Doctor  Jespersen  admits  that  our 
tongue  has  a  certain  masculine  ungainliness.  It 
has  rare  elements  of  strength  in  its  simplicity.  In 
English  the  subject  almost  invariably  precedes  the 
verb  and  the  object  follows  it;  even  in  English 
poetry  this  usage  is  seldom  violated.  In  Tenny- 
son, its  observance  might  be  counted  at  80, 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  235 

but  in  the  poetry  of  Holger  Drachmann,  the  Dane,  it  falls 
to  61,  in  Anatole  France's  prose,  to  66,  in  Gabriele  d'  An- 
nunzio  to  49,  and  in  the  poetry  of  Goethe  to  30. 

That  our  language  has  only  five  vowels,  which 
have  to  do  duty  for  more  than  a  score  of  sounds,  is 
a  grave  fault;  and  the  unhappy  French  preacher 
who,  from  an  English  pulpit,  pronounced  "plough" 
as  "pluff"  had  much  excuse.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  why  do  the  French  make  us  say  "fluer  de 
lis,"  instead  of  "fleur  de  lee"?  And  "Rheims"? 
How  many  conversational  pitfalls  is  "Rheims" 
responsible  for! 

There  is  no  book  that  ought  to  give  the  judicious 
such  quiet  pleasure  or  more  food  for  thought  or 
for  stimulating  conversation  than  Mr.  Mencken's 
"The  American  Language,"  except  Burton's  "An- 
atomy of  Melancholy,"  Boswell's  "  Johnson, v  the 
"Devout  Life"  of  Saint  Francis  de  Sales,  Pepys's 
"Diary,"  the  "Letters"  of  Madame  de  Sevigne, 
Beveridge's  "Life"  of  Marshall,  and  the  "Memoirs" 
of  Gouverneur  Morris!  It  is  a  book  for  odd  mo- 
ments; yet  it  is  a  temptation  to  continuous  reading; 
and  a  precious  treasure  is  its  bibliography!  And 
how  pleasant  it  is  to  verify  the  quotations  in  a  li- 
brary; preferably  with  the  snow  falling  in  thick 


236  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

flakes,  and  an  English  victim  who  cannot  escape, 
even  after  dinner  is  announced.  Mr.  Mencken  is  a 
benefactor ! 

It  is  very  remarkable  that  Mr.  Mencken's 
audacious  disregard  of  English  grammar  in  theory- 
has  not  impaired  the  clearness  of  his  point  of  view 
and  of  his  own  style.  If  dead  authors  could 
write  after  the  manner  in  which  Mr.  Andrew  Lang 
has  written  to  them,  I  should  like  to  read  Herbert 
Spencer's  opinions  of  Mr.  Mencken's  volumes. 
If  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  Sir  Conan  Doyle  want 
really  to  please  a  small  but  discriminating  public, 
let  them  induce  Herbert  Spencer  to  analyze  Mr. 
Mencken's  statements  on  the  growth  of  the 
English  language!  In  my  time  we  were  expected 
to  take  Spencer's  "Philosophy  of  Style"  very  seri- 
ously. There  is  no  doubt  that  his  principles  have 
been  repeated  by  every  writer  on  style,  including 
Dr.  Barrett  Wendell  in  his  important  "English 
Composition,"  since  Mr.  Spencer  wrote;  but  the 
method  of  Spencer's  expression  of  his  principles  re- 
minds one  of  the  tangled  wood  in  which  Dante  lan- 
guished before  he  met  Beatrice. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Spencer  makes  us 
think  of  writing  as  a  science  and  art;  his  philosophy 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  237 

of  style  is  right  enough.  But  while  he  provokes 
puzzled  thought,  he  does  no  more.  There  is  more 
meat  in  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  "A  College 
Magazine"  than  in  all  the  complications  in  style 
in  the  brochure  of  the  idol  of  the  eighties. 

And  a  greater  stylist  than  even  Stevenson  is  the 
author  of  a  little  volume  which  I  keep  by  my  side 
ever  since  Mr.  Frederick  O'Brien  and  the  terrifying 
Gaugain  have  turned  us  to  the  islands  of  the  Pacific. 
It  is  Charles  Warren  Stoddard's  "South  Sea  Idyls." 
And  if  one  wants  to  know  how  to  read  for  pleasure 
or  comfort — for  reading  or  writing  does  not  come 
by  nature — there  is  "Moby  Dick,"  by  Herman 
Melville,  the  close  friend  of  the  Hawthornes  and  a 
writer  so  American  that  Mr.  Mencken  must  love 
him.     But  he  ought  to  be  read  as  a  novelist. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  "The  South  Sea 
Idyls"  bring  the  flaneur — the  chief  business  of  a 
flaneur  of  the  pavements  (we  were  forbidden  in 
old  Philadelphia  to  say  "sidewalks")  is  to  look 
into  unrelated  shop-windows;  but  the  flaneur 
among  books  finds  none  of  his  shop-windows  un- 
related— back  to  Mr.  Mencken,  who  does  not  give 
us  the  genesis  of  a  word  that  sounded  something 
like    "sadie."     It    meant    "thank    you."     Every 


238  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Pennsylvania  child  used  it,  until  the  elegants 
interfered,  and  they  often  did  interfere.  You 
might  say  "apothecary"  or  "chemist";  but  you 
should  never  say  "druggist."  I  trust  that  it  is 
no  breach  of  confidence  to  repeat  that  the  devout 
and  very  distinguished  of  modern  Philadelphians, 
Mr.  John  Drew,  discovered  that  there  were  two 
languages  in  his  neighbourhood,  one  for  the  ears 
of  his  parents  and  one  for  the  boys  in  the  street. 
One  was  very  much  in  the  position  of  the  York- 
shire lad  I  met  the  other  day.  "But  you  haven't 
a  Yorkshire  accent!"  "No,  sir,"  he  said,  "my 
parents  whipped  it  out  of  me."  But  there  is,  in 
New  York  City,  at  least  the  beginning  of  one 
American  language — the  language  of  the  street. 

In  considering  the  impression  that  books  have 
usually  made  on  me,  I  have  often  asked  myself 
why  they  are  such  an  unfailing  source  of  pleasure 
and  even  of  joy.  Every  reader  has,  of  course,  his 
own  answer  to  this.  For  the  plots  of  novels,  I 
have  always  had  very  little  respect,  although  I 
believe,  with  Anthony  Trollope,  that  a  plot  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  a  really  good  novel,  and 
that  it  is  the  very  soul  of  a  romance.     Of  memoirs 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  239 

— even  the  apocryphal  writings  of  the  Marquise  de 
Crequy  have  always  been  very  agreeable  to  me; 
I  have  never  been  so  dull  or  so  tired,  that  I  could 
not  find  some  solace  in  the  Diary  of  Mr.  Pepys, 
in  the  Autobiography  of  Franklin,  in  the  peerless 
journal  of  Mr.  Boswell;  and  even  the  revelations 
of  Madame  Campan,  as  a  last  resource,  were 
worth  returning  to.  As  for  the  diary  of  Madame 
d'Arblay,  it  reproduces  so  admirably  the  struggles 
of  a  bright  spirit  against  the  dullest  of  all  atmos- 
pheres, that  it  seems  like  a  new  discovery  in 
psychology.  And  now  comes  Professor  Tinker's 
"Young  Boswell"  and  those  precious  diaries  in- 
cluding that  of  Mrs.  Pepys  by  a  certain  E.  Barring- 
ton.     Life  is  worth  living! 

I  must  confess  that  I  have  never  found  any 
poet  excepting  King  David  whom  I  liked  because 
he  taught  me  anything.  Didactic  "  poetry  "  wearies 
me,  probably  because  it  is  not  poetry  at  all.  When 
people  praise  Thompson's  "Hound  of  Heaven," 
because  it  is  dogmatic,  I  am  surprised — for  if  I 
found  anything  dogmatic  in  it,  it  would  lose  all 
its  splendour  for  me.  The  Apocalypse  and  "The 
Hound  of  Heaven"  are  glorious  visions  of  truth 
at  a  white  heat. 


240  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

Tennyson's  "Two  Voices"  loses  all  its  value 
when  it  ceases  to  be  a  picture  and  becomes  an 
important  sermon.  And  as  for  Spenser,  the 
didactic  symbolism  of  his  "Faerie  Queen"  might 
be  lost  forever  with  no  great  disadvantage  to 
posterity  if  his  splendid  "Epithalamion"  could  be 
preserved.  Browning's  optimism  has  always  left 
me  cold,  and  I  never  could  quite  understand  why 
most  of  his  readers  have  set  him  down  as  a  great 
philosopher.  All  may  be  well  with  the  world,  but 
I  could  never  see  that  Browning's  poetry  proved 
it  in  any  way.  When  the  time  comes  for  a  culti- 
vated English  world — a  thoughtful  English-speak- 
ing world — to  weigh  the  merits  of  English-speaking 
poets,  Browning  will  be  found  among  the  first. 
Who  has  done  anything  finer  in  English  than  "A 
Grammarian's  Funeral"?  Or  "My  Last  Duch- 
ess," or  "A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's"  or  some  of  the 
passages  in  "Pippa  Passes"?  Who  has  conceived 
a  better  fable  for  a  poem  than  that  of  "Pippa"? 
And  as  for  Keats,  the  world  he  discovered  for  us 
is  of  greater  value  to  the  faculties  of  the  mind  than 
all  the  philosophies  of  Wordsworth. 

To  me,  the  intense  delight  I  have  in  novels  and 
poems  is  due  to  their  power  of  taking  me  out  of 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  241 

myself,  of  enlightening  me  as  to  my  own  faults  and 
peculiarities,  not  by  preaching  but  by  example,  and 
of  raising  me  to  a  higher  plane  of  toleration  and  of 
gaiety  of  heart. 

As  I  grow  older,  I  find  that  the  phrase  Stevenson 
once  applied  to  works  of  fiction  becomes  more  and 
more  regrettable.  He  compared  the  followers  of 
this  consoling  art  to  "filles  de  joie. "  He  doubtless 
meant  that  these  goddesses — "les  filles  de  joie"  are 
always  young — gave  us  visions  of  the  joy  of  life; 
that  they  might  be  sensuous  without  being  sensual; 
but  his  phrase  falls  far  short  of  the  truth.  There 
are  novels,  like  Mrs.  Jackson's  "Ramona,"  which 
are  joyous  and  serious  at  once.  Or  take  "The 
Cardinal's  Snuff  Box"  or  "Pepita  Jiminez." 

Every  constant  reader  has  his  favourite  essay- 
ists. As  a  rule,  he  reads  them  to  be  soothed  or 
to  be  amused.  In  making  my  confession,  I  must 
say  that  only  a  few  of  the  essayists  really  amuse 
me.  They  are,  as  a  rule,  more  witty  than  hu- 
morous, and  generally  they  make  one  self-con- 
scious, being  self-conscious  themselves.  There 
are  a  hundred  different  types  of  the  essayist. 
Each  of  us  has  his  favourite  bore  among  them. 
Once  I  found  all  the  prose  works  of  a  fine  poet  and 


242  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

friend  of  mine,  Aubrey  de  Vere,  on  the  shelves  of 
a  constant  reader.  "Why?"  I  asked.  "The  re- 
sult of  a  severe  sense  of  duty!"  he  said. 

Madame  Roland  tried  hard  for  a  title  of  nobility 
and  failed,  though  she  gained  in  the  end  a  greater 
title.  Her  works  are  insufferably  and  compla- 
cently conceited,  and  yet  I  always  look  at  their 
bindings  with  respect.  Mrs.  Blashfield,  who  died 
too  soon,  has  given  us,  in  her  first  volume — unfor- 
tunately the  only  one — a  new  view  of  this  Empress 
of  Didacticism.  It  is  strange  indeed  that  Madame 
Roland  could  have  been  nourished  by  that  most 
stimulating  of  all  books — "The  Devout  Life  of 
St.  Francis  de  Sales."  Monseigneur  de  Sales  is, 
to  my  mind,  the  most  practical  of  all  the  essayists, 
even  when  he  puts  his  essays  in  the  form  of  letters. 
Next  comes  Fenelon's  and — I  know  that  I  shall 
shock  those  who  regard  his  philosophy  as  merely 
Deistic — next  comes,  for  his  power  of  stimulation, 
Emerson. 

It  has  certainly  occurred  to  me,  perhaps  too 
late,  that  these  confessions  may  be  taken  as  di- 
dactic in  themselves;  in  writing  them  I  have  had 
not  the  slightest  intention  of  improving  anybody's 
mind  but  simply  of  relieving  my  own,  by  button- 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  243 

holing  the  reader  who  happens  to  come  my  way. 
I  should  like  to  add  that  what  is  called  the  coarse- 
ness of  the  eighteenth-century  novel  and  romance 
is  much  more  healthful  than  the  nasty  brutality 
of  a  school  of  our  novelists — who  make  up  for 
their  lack  of  talent  and  of  wide  experience  by 
trying  to  excite  animal  instincts.  Eroticism 
may  be  delicately  treated;  but  art  has  nothing  in 
common  with  the  process  of  "cooking  stale  cab- 
bage over  farthing  candles,"  to  use  Charles  Reade's 
phrase. 

If  my  habit  of  constant  reading  had  not  taught 
me  the  value  of  calmness  and  patience,  I  should 
like  to  say,  with  violent  emphasis,  that  a  reason 
for  thanking  God  is  that  Americans  have  produced 
a  literature — the  continuation  of  an  older  litera- 
ture with  variations,  it  is  true, — that  has  added  to 
the  glory  of  civilization.  To  prove  this,  I  need 
mention  only  one  book,  "The  Scarlet  Letter," 
and  I  am  glad  to  end  my  book  by  writing  the  name 
of  Hawthorne.  Literary  comparisons  with  Eng- 
land, or  with  France,  Italy,  Spain,  or  any  of  the 
other  continental  nations,  are  no  longer  to  our 
disadvantage.  It  is  the  fashion  of  the  American  who 
writes  of  American  books  to  put — in  his  own  mind, 


244  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

at  least — a  title  to  his  discourse  that  reminds  me 
of  Miss  Blanche  Amory's  "Mes  Larmes."  It  is 
an  outworn  tradition.  American  literature  is  ro- 
bust enough  for  smiles. 

It  can  smile  and  laugh.  It  can  be  serious  and  not 
self-conscious.  It  is  rapidly  taking  to  itself  all  the 
best  traditions  of  the  older  literature  and  assimilat- 
ing them.  Christopher  Morley  and  Heywood 
Broun  and  Don  Marquis  and  Mencken  write — at 
their  best — as  lightly  and  as  trippingly  as  any  past 
master  of  the  feuilleton.  There  is  nobody  writing 
in  the  daily  press  in  Paris  to-day  who  does  the 
feuilleton  as  well  as  they  do  it.  If  you  ask  me 
whether  I,  as  a  constant  reader,  pay  much  atten- 
tion to  what  they  say,  I  shall  answer,  No.  But 
their  method  is  the  thing.  Will  they  live?  Of 
course  not.  Is  Emile  de  Girardin  alive  ?  Or  all  the 
clever  ones  that  James  Huneker  found  buried  and 
could  not  revive  ?  One  still  reads  the  "  Portraits  de 
Femmes,"  of  Sainte-Beuve ;  but  Sainte-Beuve  was 
something  more  than  a  "columnist."  And  these  folk 
will  be,  too,  in  time!  At  any  rate,  they  are  good 
enough  for  the  present. 

Who,  writing  in  French  or  in  any  language, 
outre-mer,  does  better,  or  as  well,  as  Holliday? 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  245 

And  where  is  the  peer  of  Charles  S.  Brooks  in 
"Hints  to  Pilgrims"?  "Luca  Sarto,"  the  best 
novel  of  old  Italian  life  by  an  American — since  Mrs. 
Wharton's  "Valley  of  Decision" — proved  him  to 
be  a  fine  artist.  He  perhaps  knew  his  period  better 
psychologically  than  Mrs.  Wharton,  but  here 
there's  room  for  argument.  Mrs.  Wharton,  al- 
though she  is  an  admirable  artist,  grows  indifferent 
and  insular  at  long  intervals. 

"Luca  Sarto"  dropped  like  the  gentle  rain  from 
heaven;  and  then  came  "Hints  to  Pilgrims." 
This  I  wanted  to  write  about  in  the  Yale  Review, 
but  the  selfish  editor,  Mr.  Cross,  said  that  he  pre- 
ferred to  keep  it  for  himself! 

"Hints  to  Pilgrims"  is  the  essence  of  the  modern 
essay.  Strangely  enough,  it  sent  me  back  to  the 
"Colour  of  Life"  by  the  only  real  iprecieuse  living 
in  our  world  to-day,  Alice  Meynell;  and  I  read  that 
with  new  delight  between  certain  paragraphs  in 
Brooks's  paper  "On  Finding  a  Plot."  Why  is  not 
"Hints  to  Pilgrims"  in  its  fourteenth  edition?  Or 
why  has  it  no  claque?  The  kind  of  claque  that 
is  so  common  now — which  opens  suddenly  like 
a  chorus  of  cicadas  in  the  "Idylls  of  Theocritus"? 
After  all,  your  education  must  have  been  well  be- 


246  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

gun  before  you  can  enjoy  "Hints  to  Pilgrims," 
while  for  "Huckleberry  Finn"  the  less  education 
you  have,  the  better.     Mr.  Brooks  writes: 

Let  us  suppose,  for  example,  that  Carmen,  before  she  got 
into  that  ugly  affair  with  the  Toreador,  had  settled  down  in 
Barchester  beneath  the  towers.  Would  the  shadow  of  the 
cloister,  do  you  think,  have  cooled  her  Southern  blood? 
Would  she  have  conformed  to  the  decent  gossip  of  the  town? 
Or,  on  the  contrary,  does  not  a  hot  colour  always  tint  the  colder 
mixture?  Suppose  that  Carmen  came  to  live  just  outside  the 
Cathedral  close  and  walked  every  morning  with  her  gay 
parasol  and  her  pretty  swishing  skirts  past  the  Bishop's 
window. 

We  can  fancy  his  pen  hanging  dully  above  his  sermon,  with 
his  eyes  on  space  for  any  wandering  thought,  as  if  the  clouds, 
like  treasure  ships  upon  a  sea,  were  freighted  with  riches  for 
his  use.  The  Bishop  is  brooding  on  an  address  to  the  Ladies' 
Sewing  Guild.  He  must  find  a  text  for  his  instructive  finger. 
It  is  a  warm  spring  morning  and  the  daffodils  are  waving  in 
the  borders  of  the  grass.  A  robin  sings  in  the  hedge  with  an 
answer  from  his  mate.  There  is  wind  in  the  tree-tops  with 
lively  invitation  to  adventure,  but  the  Bishop  is  bent  to  his 
sober  task.  Carmen  picks  her  way  demurely  across  the  pud- 
dles in  the  direction  of  the  Vicarage.  Her  eyes  turn  modestly 
toward  his  window.  Surely  she  does  not  see  him  at  his  desk. 
That  dainty  inch  of  scarlet  stocking  is  quite  by  accident.  It 
is  the  puddles  and  the  wind  frisking  with  her  skirt. 

"Eh!  Dear  me!"  The  good  man  is  merely  human.  He 
pushes  up  his  spectacles  for  nearer  sight.  He  draws  aside  the 
curtain.  "Dear  me!  Bless  my  soul!  Who  is  the  lady? 
Quite  a  foreign  air.     I  don't  remember  her  at  our  little  gather- 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  247 

ings  for  the  heathen."  A  text  is  forgotten.  The  clouds  are 
empty  caravels.  He  calls  to  Betsy,  the  housemaid,  for  a 
fresh  neckcloth  and  his  gaiters.  He  has  recalled  a  meeting 
with  the  Vicar  and  goes  out  whistling  softly,  to  disaster. 

You  do  not  find  delightful  fooling  like  this  every 
day;  and  there  is  much  more  of  it.     Take  this: 

Suppose,  for  a  better  example,  that  the  cheerful  Mark 
Tapley,  who  always  came  out  strong  in  adversity,  were  placed 
in  a  modern  Russian  novel.  As  the  undaunted  Taplovitch 
he  would  have  shifted  its  gloom  to  a  sunny  ending.  Fancy 
our  own  dear  Pollyanna,  the  glad  girl,  adopted  by  an  aunt 
in  "Crime  and  Punishment."  Even  Dostoyevsky  must  have 
laid  down  his  doleful  pen  to  give  her  at  last  a  happy  wedding 
— flower-girls  and  angel-food,  even  a  shrill  soprano  behind  the 
hired  palms  and  a  table  of  cut  glass. 

Oliver  Twist  and  Nancy — merely  acquaintances  in  the 
original  story — with  a  fresh  hand  at  the  plot,  might  have 
gone  on  a  bank  holiday  to  Margate.  And  been  blown  off 
shore.  Suppose  that  the  whole  excursion  was  wrecked  on 
Treasure  Island  and  that  everyone  was  drowned  except 
Nancy,  Oliver,  and  perhaps  the  trombone  player  of  the  ships' 
band,  who  had  blown  himself  so  full  of  wind  for  fox-trots  on 
the  upper  deck  that  he  couldn't  sink.  It  is  Robinson  Crusoe, 
lodging  as  a  handsome  bachelor  on  the  lonely  island — ob- 
serve the  cunning  of  the  plot! — who  battles  with  the  waves 
and  rescues  Nancy.  The  movie-rights  alone  of  this  are 
worth  a  fortune.  And  then  Crusoe,  Oliver,  Friday,  and  the 
trombone  player  stand  a  siege  from  John  Silver  and  Bill 
Sikes,  who  are  pirates,  with  Spanish  doubloons  in  a  hidden 
cove.     And  Crusoe  falls  in  love  with  Nancy.     Here  is  a  tense 


248  CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BOOK-LOVER 

triangle.  But  youth  goes  to  youth.  Crusoe's  whiskers  are 
only  dyed  their  glossy  black.  The  trombone  player,  by  good 
luck  (you  see  now  why  he  was  saved  from  the  wreck),  is  dis- 
covered to  be  a  retired  clergyman — doubtless  a  Methodist. 
The  happy  knot  is  tied.  And  then — a  sail !  A  sail !  Oliver 
and  Nancy  settle  down  in  a  semi-detached  near  London,  with 
oyster  shells  along  the  garden  path  and  cat-tails  in  the  um- 
brella jar.  The  story  ends  prettily  under  their  plane-tree  at 
the  rear — tea  for  three,  with  a  trombone  solo,  and  the  faith- 
ful Friday  and  Old  Bill,  reformed  now,  as  gardener,  clipping 
together  the  shrubs  against  the  sunny  wall. 

When  I  found  Brooks,  I  felt  again  the  pang  of 
loss,  that  Theodore  Roosevelt  had  not  read  "Hints 
to  Pilgrims,"  before  he  passed  into  "the  other  room" 
and  eternal  light  shone  upon  him !  He  would  have 
discovered  "Hints  to  Pilgrims,"  and  celebrated  it 
as  soon  as  any  of  us. 

How  he  loved  books!  And  he  seemed  to  have 
read  all  the  right  things  in  his  youth;  you  forgot 
time  and  kicked  Black  Care  away  when  he  talked 
with  you  about  them.  He  could  drop  from 
Dante  to  Brillat-Savarin  (in  whom  he  had  not  much 
interest,  since  he  was  a  gourmet  and  did  not 
regard  sausages  as  the  highest  form  of  German 
art!)  and  his  descents  and  ascents  from  book  to 
book,  were  as  smooth  as  Melba's  sliding  scales — 
and  her  scales  were  smoother  than  Patti's. 


BOOKS  AT  RANDOM  249 

Do  you  remember  his  "Dante  in  the  Bowery," 
and  "The  Ancient  Irish  Sagas"?  He  caught  fire 
at  the  quotation  from  the  "Lament  of  Deirdre"; 
and  concluded  at  once  that  the  Celts  were  the  only 
people  who,  before  Christianity  invented  chivalry, 
understood  the  meaning  of  romantic  love.  It  is 
a  great  temptation  to  write  at  length  on  the  books 
he  liked,  and  how  he  fought  for  them,  and  explained 
them,  and  lived  with  them.  Thinking  of  him,  the 
most  constant  of  book-lovers,  I  can  only  say, 
"Farewell  and  Hail!" 


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